Here’s one for the unconventional wisdom files. Women voters supercharge Hillary Clinton’s engine on the road to the nomination, right? The hi-octane boost she gets from female voters is part of this campaign’s regular narrative. So in any given primary, the bigger the slice of the electorate women represent, the better Senator Clinton should perform. But that may not be entirely correct says University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee political scientist Tom Holbrook. Dr. Holbrook prepared a chart that plots the proportion of women in each primary election with Senator Clinton’s percentage in that state. The results: a slight negative correlation. In other words, as the proportion of women voters in a state goes up, Senator Clinton’s percentage of votes goes down. Holbrook doesn’t venture any guesses as to the cause of this odd finding but does note that “a couple of Clinton’s strongest showings were in states like Oklahoma and California where the female share of the electorate was well below average.” See Holbrook’s full post here.
