Women continue to make their voices heard in the 2016 elections – especially on the Democratic side.
In Nevada, more Democratic women than men voted in the caucus, and they voted heavily for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Fifty-six percent of Democratic Nevada caucus goers were women, and 57 percent of them voted for Clinton. Forty-one percent voted for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Democratic men broke for Sanders, 53 percent to Clinton’s 44 percent, a narrower gap. Exit polls haven’t been breaking down by gender and age, so it’s unclear whether young women voted for Sanders while older women voted for Clinton.
Looking at the youth vote, Sanders continues to blow Clinton out of the water. Eighty-two percent of voters aged 17-29 voted for Sanders, compared to just 14 percent voting for Clinton. Voters under 45 also overwhelmingly voted for Sanders, with 72 percent going for the Vermont senator and 25 percent breaking for Clinton. Voters over 45, however, voted heavily for Clinton, 66 percent to 31 percent.
Because there are still more Republican candidates, the primary in South Carolina is a little more interesting in terms of how women voted. Republican voters were more evenly split between men and women, with 49 percent of primary voters being women and 51 percent being men.
Women in South Carolina voted for businessman Donald Trump ahead of all the other candidates (29 percent), followed by Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (23 percent) and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (22 percent). More men voted for Trump (36 percent), but split evenly among Cruz and Rubio at 22 percent.
Of the top three candidates, however, only Rubio received a larger share of the women’s vote than the men’s. Twenty-three percent of women voted for Rubio compared to 22 percent of men. The bottom three candidates – former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and former neurosurgeon Ben Carson – also received more votes from women than men.
Republican men and women don’t tend to differ too much in how they vote, mostly because right-leaning women care about the same issues as men, such as foreign policy and the economy. In contrast, Democratic women tend to say their top issues are social policies (and identity politics play a role), which leads to disparities between the sexes on voting.
It’s an interesting dynamic, and I will continue to watch the role that women play in electing our next president.
Ashe Schow is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
