2016 Election Analysis: Women Voters Did Not Abandon Clinton, Nor Did She Fail to Win Their Support.

Barbara Lee Family Foundation
Contact: Bridgette McMahon                                                         
bmcmahon@blff.org.
(617) 234-0355 ext. 101

With over 60 years of experience studying women candidates and campaigns between them, the Center for American Women and Politics (Eagleton Institute of Politics, Rutgers University) and the Barbara Lee Family Foundation analyzed the 2016 presidential election through a gender lens with their joint project, Presidential Gender Watch. Post-election, evaluation of the gender dynamics we saw continues.

Assessing the role of women voters in the outcome of Tuesday’s presidential election is an important part of the post- election discussion. In an attempt to explain the results, there has been a narrative building that women abandoned Hillary Clinton. This is not only short-sighted, but largely incorrect.

• Clinton won 54% of women’s votes on Tuesday night, a performance on par with Democratic presidential candidates in the past two decades.

• Clinton outperformed Obama significantly among college-educated white women, earning 51% of their votes and besting Trump among this group by six points; in 2012, Mitt Romney held a six-point advantage against Obama among this group.

• Clinton won married women by 2 points, the first Democratic candidate to do so in 20 years.

• Clinton won 94% of black women’s votes, similar to the 96% of black women who voted for Obama.

• In Latino Decisions' election eve poll, 86% of Latinas reported supporting Clinton (18 points higher than the national exit poll). In the same poll in 2012, 77% Latinas expressed support for President Obama.

• The idea that white women “abandoned” Clinton is misleading. The majority of white women have voted for the Republican presidential candidate in every election since 2004, and they have done so in greater proportions than they did this year.

In the autopsy of the election 2016, there is good reason to pay close attention to women voters, but that means doing the work to avoid homogenizing them or evaluating their behavior without historical context. Only then will we tell a complete, and complex, story about women voters’ influence in the race to put a woman in the White House.

For more information, please visit the Presidential Gender Watch website for a full analysis.

About Presidential Gender Watch 2016

Presidential Gender Watch 2016 is a nonpartisan project of the Center for American Women and Politics (Eagleton Institute of Politics, Rutgers University) and the Barbara Lee Family Foundation. The Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP), a unit of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is nationally recognized as the leading source of scholarly research and current data about American women’s political participation. For nearly two decades, elected officials, candidates, and practitioners have used Barbara Lee Family Foundation research to better understand the obstacles and opportunities facing women in politics. Presidential Gender Watch 2016 draws upon the research and expertise of both partner organizations, as well as other experts, to further public understanding of how gender influences candidate strategy, voter engagement and expectations, media coverage, and electoral outcomes in the race for the nation’s highest executive office.