What White Women Want, Surprisingly the GOP
By David Paul Kuhn
November 13, 2009
This week, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Florida Democrat, told reporters the GOP offers a "back-of-the-hand treatment to women." Later she said two conservative female representatives only serve to further "repulse women." You see, Schultz said on MSNBC, Republicans "don't really get very many women when it comes to elections."
The week before, in Virginia, the Republican gubernatorial candidate won women. And in blue New Jersey, the Republican lost women but won white women by 18 percentage points.
Last year, John McCain won a majority of the white female vote. They sum to more than 25 million women. Democrats, so many forget, have not won a majority of white women since 1964.
Few subjects evoke more wrongheaded conventional wisdom than the gender gap. Consider a more common expression of the same factoid. In Democratic commenter Steve McMahon's words, "the Republican party is becoming, regressing to become, a white male southern party." NPR's Juan Williams said the GOP was a "regional southern party of white men." Even Republican strategist Mike Murphy called his GOP "the party of white males." Or as BBC's Katty Kay framed the danger, Republicans "don't want to end up being the party of white men."
The white part is correct. It goes without saying that Republicans must, foremost, win new minority voters. And Republicans do fare significantly better with white men than women. But take BBC's Kay. She's a fair-minded pundit and has written a book about women. But even Kay overlooks that the GOP consistently wins white women.
Republicans do, to be certain, have women troubles. Democrats have won a majority of women in every presidential election since 1996. The women most behind Democrats—women of color, college educated women, single and young women—are all a growing share of the electorate.
But Republicans' ranks are hardly without women. Republicans have won roughly a third of Hispanic women ...
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