Iowa women made up a little more than half of the caucus-goers Monday night, and their votes may come as a surprise to some.
Significantly more women than men voted in the Democratic caucus (57 percent to 43 percent, the same breakdown as in 2008), while the sexes voted pretty evenly in the Republican caucus (48 percent women to 52 percent men), according to CBS News. It’s interesting to note that Republicans closed the gender gap somewhat this time around. In 2012 the Iowa caucuses were 57 percent men and only 43 percent women.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz won the female vote for the Republican party, with 27 percent. Yet despite media focus on Donald Trump’s alleged sexism, 24 percent of women voted for the business mogul. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio came in third, with 21 percent, with former neurosurgeon Ben Carson trailing in fourth with 11 percent.
Men also preferred Cruz, with 29 percent of the vote. Men broke evenly for Trump and Rubio at 25 percent each. Carson came in fourth again with 8 percent. Carson, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina were the only GOP candidates who received more votes from women than from men.
I’m surprised that Trump did so well with women in Iowa. I thought Rubio would do better with women, but I’ll admit I don’t know Iowa very well and won’t pretend otherwise.
It’s not surprising that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton won a majority of women in the Democratic caucus, but Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders didn’t perform terribly. An 11-point gap separated the two candidates, with Clinton taking 53 percent of the female vote and Sanders taking 42 percent. For men, the gap was closer, at 6 percent, with more men voting for Sanders than for Hillary.
This is a smaller gap among women than nationally, where a recent Monmouth University poll found Clinton with a 19-point lead over Sanders. This lead was down considerably from December, when Monmouth showed Clinton with a 45-point lead over Sanders among women.
In Iowa, married women voted overwhelmingly for Clinton over Sanders, 60 percent to 34 percent. But non-married women voted for Sanders over Clinton 53 percent to 43 percent. This is partly due to non-married women being younger, and Sanders is crushing the youth vote. Voters aged 17-29 went strong for Sanders, with 84 percent of the vote. Clinton received only 14 percent of voters in this age range.
To put that in perspective, President Obama received 57 percent of this age group’s vote in 2008, while Clinton at that time received 11 percent. To be fair, John Edwards and Bill Richardson helped split the vote in a wider field, but it’s still a testament to Sanders’ strong youth appeal.
Iowa is just one state, and not very representative of the electorate at large. It will be interesting to watch how women continue to vote throughout this election.
Ashe Schow is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
