In the 2016 election, white women voters became something of a white whale for Donald Trump. His electoral performance among white women was all he could seemingly talk about. While the narrative he peddled – that he beat Hillary Clinton among all women voters – was false (Clinton’s significant advantage among non-white women led her to beat Trump by 15 points among all women voters), he did in fact outperform Clinton marginally among white women. The New York Time’s went on to proclaim, in an oft-cited headline, that “White Women Helped Elect Donald Trump.”
The data point gained a life of its own. Vogue asked bluntly, “Why Do White Women Keep Voting for the GOP?” An op-Ed in the Guardian used the same figure to question the half of white women who continue to vote Republican, “What's wrong with them?”
Exit polls initially suggested that the percentage of white women who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 was as high as 53 percent. “The 53 percent” went viral – pundits and activists took to social media to voice their varied reasons for why these white women voted for Trump. It stunned many progressives and helped to shape the early development of the Women’s March. How could it be that so many white women voters supported a man with such a history of sexism and inappropriate behavior toward women?
Eventually, the figure was cited so frequently that Pew Research decided to conduct a deeper examination of the 2016 electorate, based on validated voters. Their research eventually determined that Donald Trump did in fact secure a plurality of the vote among white women – though smaller than the viral 53 percent – besting Hillary Clinton by a 47-45% margin.
Now, new polling conducted by Whitman Insight Strategies finds that the same voters who helped elect Donald Trump in 2016 are set to retire him in 2020. Trump has lost significant support among white women voters and trails Joe Biden by 13 percent among this cohort.
The 53 percent are now the 41 percent.
A lot has changed since the 2016 election. Most striking perhaps is just how far Trump’s support has fallen among white women.
In 2016, Trump outperformed among white women relative to voters overall. Today his position is substantially worse among white women. His overall approval rating in the poll stands at 42%. But among white women voters, just 35% approve of his performance.
In response to these significant declines, Trump and his campaign have attempted to regain their footing among white women voters by resetting the national conversation with a message of law and order.
‘Law and order’ has been a cornerstone of Republican politics since the 1960s. It was the message that propelled Ronald Reagan to the governorship in California in 1966 and sent Richard Nixon to the White House in 1968. Republicans used it to indict Democrats for the crime that dominated the zeitgeist and push back against problems of drugs and violence that gripped communities across America.
But it was also message that was used to disguise the racialized message of Republicans, masking their animosity toward Black voters and immigrants, and implying to white women voters that non-white communities are the cause of their troubles. It is, at its core, a message of racial resentment.
And it was a message that, unfortunately, often worked: white voters turned against Democrats, as Republicans painted them as being soft on crime. From Reagan’s push for mandatory minimum sentences to the Willie Horton ad to suggestions that Barack Obama was palling around with terrorists, law and order has been used by Republicans for decades to influence white women voters who generally support a progressive social agenda but worry about the safety of their community.
But Donald Trump has upended the politics of law and order – and his attempt to churn out the same refrain to scare white voters is failing. To be clear, it’s not an issue of message: 89% of white women voters believe that America needs law and order and that it is the root of our prosperity, our freedom, and our very way of life.
It’s an issue of messenger. No longer is Donald Trump’s Republican Party seen as the reassuring alternative. Instead, the lawless boogeyman that white women voters have been told to fear is now literally living in the White House.
The shifts are striking, and Donald Trump’s response to the protests following the murder of George Floyd have only exacerbated the changing politics of law and order.
Today, white women voters are more afraid of Donald Trump being re-elected as President than they are the peaceful protests happening in their community. Nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of white women voters think that Donald Trump’s words and actions will lead to a more violent America; a similar percent think that Donald Trump’s involvement in the situation has actually made things worse.
For the first time in modern American politics, Democrats are winning on the issue of law and order. Nearly 3 in 5 (59 percent) white women voters trust Joe Biden more as President to protect Americans’ safety. Just 41 percent trust Donald Trump to do the same.
If any other Republican president was in the White House, a message of law and order in a time of unrest might well work. It has been a cornerstone of the GOP playbook for decades. But Donald Trump is uniquely toxic. He has poisoned the well of voters in such a way that his message is having the opposite effect as intended.
This is a referendum election on the incumbent president and, at the moment, the white women voters who helped elect Donald Trump believe he is threatening the safety and well-being of their communities.
Matt McDermott is a Democratic strategist and Vice President at Whitman Insight Strategies. He can be found on Twitter @mattmfm.