“No such thing as ‘the women’s vote’”

Faced with the choice between the first female candidate from a major political party and a former game-show host with countless allegations of sexual assault, many thought the choice for women seemed clear. However, polling by Pew Research following the 2016 election showed that as much as 47 percent of white women supported President Trump.

The missing factor? What research by Tasha Philpot, a professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin, calls a “racialized gender gap.”

In both the United States and abroad, women are more likely to vote for politically liberal candidates. In the U.S., however, a second gap exists: one between white women and women of color.

According to Rutgers University’s Center for American Women and Politics, nearly every major national poll of the 2020 election showed women supporting Biden by much larger margins than men, resulting in this century’s largest political gender gap. Still, the election’s gap between white women and non-white women’s support for President Trump was even larger: in an October poll by Fox News, just 10 percent of non-white women supported President Trump, compared to 48 percent of white women.

Northwestern University professor of gender studies and political science Ann Orloff said that part of the explanation could lie in the two parties’ different ideals of gender.

“The Republicans are endorsing a more ‘traditional’ idea of gender with gendered differences being endorsed… and some women go along with that,” she said. “The Democrats have embraced a more contemporary vision of gender relations which is more egalitarian.”

According to Orloff, one major challenge facing the Democratic party is how to bridge women who may believe in more traditional gender roles and the growing part of their constituency that is younger, more diverse and farther left than previous generations.

Orloff believes that the Democratic party is increasingly aware of this problem, which may have influenced the selection of Kamala Harris as the first Black, female and South Asian vice president.

But just choosing a diverse candidate may not be enough to build that bridge.

Isabell Liu, a junior at Northwestern and Asian American activist, pointed to former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang, who she said many political pundits assumed would attract Asian American voters. However, Liu said many younger Asian American voters were turned off by Yang’s reliance on stereotypes, while older Asian Americans criticized his universal basic income policy as too far to the left.

Liu said Yang is a perfect example of why diversity alone isn’t strong enough to carry the Democratic party’s reliance on people, and especially women, of color.

Yale senior Ellie Singer spent the fall volunteering with local candidates in Wyoming. After texting and calling voters in the weeks leading up to the election, Singer echoed Liu’s criticism.

“One thing that I found interesting from Trump voters who were [people of color] is that some were pretty bothered by Democrats claiming to represent POC and felt super tokenized, which made them more ardent Trump supporters,” Singer said.

Singer said national conversations about voting patterns can also erase local phenomena affecting how women vote.

In Wyoming, she observed that many liberal voters voted Democratically because of national policy preferences and beliefs. However, she said many white women she talked to voted for Republicans because of rural issues such as gun rights and respect for law enforcement.

Nick Welch, a senior at Northwestern, witnessed the same trend in his local community. Welch spent the summer founding The Voice of Freeport: a citizen journalist organization dedicated to accountability in local politics in Freeport, Ill.

According to Welch, nationwide generalizations about voter groups can miss the fear and bias that affect both men and women in more rural communities, such as Freeport.

“The first weekend of protests following George Floyd’s murder there was a rumor on Facebook that people were ‘bussing in from Chicago’ to loot and I remember a lot of people huddling around mailboxes, nervously discussing the whole situation,” Welch said. “People said the nation was mourning George Floyd, but my neighborhood was not mourning George Floyd, they were scared of fictional Black people from Chicago.”

Despite the racialized gender gap, Democratic candidates Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were still able to clinch the 2020 election by a wide margin in both electoral votes and the popular vote.

Their win represents a step toward incorporating women of color’s issues into the Democratic party’s platform. However, as large numbers of white women remain loyal to the Republican party, Philpot’s words ring true: “there is no such thing as ‘the women’s vote.’”

This piece was written during Fall Quarter 2020 at Northwestern University as part of JOUR390: Politics, Pandemic, Protests and Presidential Election taught by Professor Ellen Shearer.