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What’s the Deal with College Educated Women?
As every other group seems to be moving away from the outright catastrophe that is the Brandon Administrion, support for his party is conspicuously increasing among one demographic group.
Why is this demographic group so cultishly loyal to Democrats? Perhaps they are more susceptible to the left-wing social indoctrination of higher education. Perhaps they are over-represented in public employees (particularly public education) and are l0yal to the party of Government. It could also have a lot to do with class conformity and status seeking.
I am going to lay another acronym down, and I know these are confusing to some. The acronym is AWFL: Affluent White Female Liberal or Leftist. These are the women who treat wearing masks in public as a secular religion; the women who populate HOA boards; the women who watch The View; the women who shop at Whole Foods; the women who want the $200,000 loans they took out to pay for their Art History degrees canceled. They are strong, independent women who live in constant terror of being ostracized from their fellow AWFLs for failing to conform.
Highly paid political consultants tell their Republican clients that “suburban women” are the voters they need to target. Their turnout is high, relative to other demographic groups; and they love Government spending (yea!), they hate “divisive social issues” (“boo-hiss”), and they want to see politicians “work across the aisle,” or at least they that’s what they want, but then they vote in large numbers for radical, partisan Democrats.
I’m not a highly paid political consultant, but I don’t think there’s a good ROI (Return On Investment) in pursuing box-wine swilling suburban AWFLs who don’t vote based on policy, but based on their perception of their social status. I would advise Republicans to turn out higher numbers of other voters, in particular, working-class men of all ethnicities. A well-crafted message could probably get 8-9 of these men to the polls for the cost of persuading one box-wine swiller to change her vote; if she is willing to do so.
Republicans have shown a distinct distaste for working-class voters. Every time a Dispatch pundit sneers at “Populism,” Jonah is really sneering at those grubby, working-class voters who probably eat at Waffle House and have no idea the name of a good Barolo to pair with a truffle salad.
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When you’re right, you’re right.
Here is a good point. Social status drives the politics of women and college women in particular. Men are more likely to adapt their political positions based on perceived outcomes.
It’s a demographic that wants sex without the responsibility and judgement.
It’s been said that single women tend to “marry the government” and I would think that if women – perhaps especially “educated” women – think things are getting riskier around them (more expensive, higher unemployment, etc) which Brandon is certainly doing, they’d (foolishly) turn MORE TO the government rather than away from it. As a “normal” woman might seek to depend more on her husband and other relatives.
Which was the point behind Barry’s Life of Julia campaign. Julia relied upon the government for everything, which the Democrats were happy to provide, and no man in sight.
Not in sight, but taxed to pay for her “everything.”
Good post. Here are some random thoughts:
Looking forward to reading the comments.
Karen has her own political party now. She is the DNC and the DNC is Karen.
I’m not at all surprised if, among white voters, college “educated” women will be the hardest demographic to reach. Women are generally more inclined to vote Democrat than are men; the c0llege “educated” (I should continue to use scare quotes when referring to what modern universities ostensibly confer on a person, but that will grow tiresome) are more likely to vote for Democrats than are the less formally educated.
The thing that strikes me most in the chart is actually the large swing of college educated males. I wonder if college educations for men and for women differ markedly from each other. I suspect that men are more likely than women to get degrees in engineering, computer science, natural sciences, mathematics, and other relatively “hard” fields, and that women predominate in the pseudo-sciences (e.g., social science, political science, gender studies, etc.) and the humanities.
If so, perhaps having “college+” suggests that the individual is further along the bell curve of his or her respective sex, and so greater outliers compared to the larger pool of less educated (and more normal) individuals.
I also wonder if 2018 is a good year to use as a reference, since it was deep in the Trump years and a great many people were reluctant to openly express their support for Trump. It just wasn’t what most “educated, right-thinking” people did. I’d be interested in seeing how that looked back in, say, 2014.
But lastly and mostly, I’m not sure that it follows that we should pay less attention to the educated-female demographic. If they’re only slowly shifting left, perhaps it would take relatively little to stop that migration, and relatively little more to reverse it. After all, we’re making inroads with other traditionally Democrat-supporting minorities, why not with college+ women as well?
Trump did a lot better, not by talking but by improving the economy, lowering unemployment ESPECIALLY for minorities, and lots more.
I have a sneaking suspicion that what it takes to attract regular people and minorities, and what it takes to attract college+ women, might just be mutually exclusive.
Could be. But I suspect that they’re different, but not mutually exclusive.
You mean like “fiscally conservative, but socially liberal?” The problem there is that “socially liberal” is very expensive. So they are, indeed, mutually exclusive.
If one believes that the lives of “college+” women would be better under good conservative governance than under the shambles of Democratic rule, then it seems to me that it should be possible to package that message in an effective way — effective, at least, for a few percent of the college+ women. And that would be enough to reverse the trend.
It might require a bit more creativity and effort on our part.
Agree. Trump made inroads into segments that Republicans tried to reach, but could not seem to pull off. We need to not only do things that materially help improve minorities’ lives, but also make sure they know who did it.
I know these women. We’ve drifted apart as I’ve become more religious and more conservative, but we were friends in the past. I think conservatives should not underestimate the importance to them of being able to abort their babies (or, now, their grandbabies in my age group). This is the one major thing I can see turning the tide against Republicans if the SCOTUS rolls back the abortion regime in the coming months. I’m hoping it will be soon enough that people will realize leaving abortion law up to the states does not prohibit all (or even most) abortions. At least, not yet. Hopefully we’ll get there.
These women have completely imbibed the feminist lie. They believe abortion is empowering rather than (the blindingly obvious effect of) setting women up for sexual exploitation and further infantilizing men by absolving them of responsibility for the children they father.
But, even conservative pro-life women have fallen for the materialism leading to “working” motherhood — also known as letting someone else raise your children. My sister and I were just discussing this in the context of me being “the last of my kind” even in our mostly conservative, large extended family. I never accepted that there was anything as important as making a home and raising our daughters. Not so most women I know of any age or political leaning.
And also, women are the “cooperative” (rather than competitive) sex and are easily swayed by “helpful” government programs such as “free” child care (see “working” motherhood above) and “universal” healthcare. And don’t you want everyone to have a “free” college education?? Are you some kind of Neanderthal?
Irreligious women are particularly susceptible to looking to the State as their source of comfort and charity. And our society is increasingly irreligious, which I think explains a lot about the voting trends among women.
I am a college+ educated, white, suburban woman. And a conservative. I do have a sordid past which I thoroughly regret, and I have no children. I am horrified by what I see the State doing to today’s children, and I support any woman who wants to stay home and raise her own children. Very few politicians of any stripe think like we do. I fear for our country.
Missing the point entirely. These women don’t vote based on policy, they vote “the personal is political.” Their vote is based on their cultural identification with the Democrat party, and the fear that not voting the way the Alpha women tell them to will lead to social estrangement.
The View is quintessential Democrat messaging to these women. Liberal women always outnumber conservative women (I don’t think there are any conservative, or even Republican, women on The View at present.) Anyone who expresses a dissenting opinion — or even less than total agreement — with the dominant opinion is shouted down, ridiculed, and put in her place. Republican ideas aren’t debated, simply stigmatized.
You aren’t going to change their minds or their votes by showing them “our way is better.” Because their mentality is, “Even if your way is better, everyone will hate me for agreeing with you.”
I’m inclined to reject the notion that “these women” are as monolithic as you seem to believe.
(Or perhaps you just have a hell of a lot more experience with a hell of a lot more women than I do.)
The main problem may be a reluctance among the people being targeted, to take care of themselves, vs having “Uncle Sugar” do it for them. No matter how you package it, self-reliance is scary to some people. Probably especially college+ single women.
I am happy to make statistically sound generalizations about large groups. But we’re talking about a small shift, and a lot of individual women. I am pretty sure that we can find points of serious agreement with a substantial number of college educated women, if we make the effort.
But I wouldn’t be surprised if the amount of what amounts to acceptance of dependency for those women necessary to get them to flip, would alienate a greater number of other voters. And, when it comes to accepting dependency, the Dims would likely always be able to outbid us.
Another college educated suburban woman here. I have many college educated suburban women conservative friends and relatives and many college educated suburban women liberal friends. We are clearly not a monolith.
I’d like to see more college educated women conservative politicians of the stature of Margaret Thatcher or Jean Kirkpatrick. I haven’t seen too many lately. Kritsi Noem, Nikki Haley come to mind. Most of our conservative congresswomen are feisty but not particularly articulate. If I were the Republicans, I would seek them out.
While the arguments for resisting extending the franchise to women were obviously specious, it’s interesting to see how the behaviour of some groups of women is consistent with the predictions of the opponents of women’s suffrage.
Then what makes you think they were specious?
Kirkland Signature at Costco.
Costco?!?!?! I think I heard someone from the DC Beltway say “Get a rope!”
The way I sometimes put it is, if women voting does lead eventually/inevitably to socialism (or worse), was it worth losing Western Civilization so that women could feel good about themselves – “empowered” or whatever- for ~100 years?
Repeal the “Progressive” era amendments to the Constitution!
I have been one of “those” women who have argued that the end of the Republic began with women’s suffrage. People think I’m kidding. . .