Young women aren’t just walking away from the Republican Party — they’re running into the arms of Democrats.
The Washington Examiner’s Katelyn Carelle reported on new research from Pew:
The amount of millennial men who identified as Democrat has gone from 52 to 49 percent in that same time frame. About 41 percent of millennial men identify as Republican, compared to 39 percent in 2002.
To be clear, these figures measure millennials who either identify as or lean toward one party. That still amounts to an utterly staggering 47-point gap in partisanship between millennial women — one that overwhelmingly favors Democrats. And the timeline is impossible to ignore here.
In 2014, the tail-end of the “War on Women” narrative, that gap was 21 percentage points. But in only four years, it’s climbed steeply upwards, more than doubling to 47. Seven-in-ten female members of an entire generation now favor Democrats. Meanwhile, the partisan gap between millennial men has barely moved.
What’s happened since 2014? The obvious answer: President Trump’s historic takeover of the GOP.
Whether or not you believe it’s warranted, the dominant media narrative has cast Trump as anti-woman. From accusations of sexual misconduct, to accusations of adultery, to the president’s own statements, as these questions have been raised in the press Trump’s reputation seems to have dug the GOP into a massive hole with a big voting bloc.
It’s fair to note than in the same time period, Democrats ran the first female major party candidate for president, which could have increased their appeal among young women regardless of Trump’s influence. But exit poll data suggests Hillary Clinton was much less popular than Bernie Sanders with 18 to 29-year-old females, a demographic she lost to him by an average of 37 percentage points in 27 primary states, according to CNN.
Again, setting aside whether you believe the “Access Hollywood” tape was “locker room talk” or completely serious, and whether all the noise about Trump’s relationship with women is legitimate or a desperate line of attack cooked up by the media, Republicans have to confront the possibility that his affiliation with the GOP is pushing young women away from the party at an incredible rate.
