Why Warren Can’t Count On A ‘Women’s Vote’

So far, Elizabeth Warren’s Democratic primary strategy seems to be working pretty well. She’s been steadily gaining support since the spring, when she was polling around fifth place, and is now neck-and-neck with Bernie Sanders, according to RealClearPolitics’ polling average. Early-state activists think she’s gaining momentum, the most plugged-in subset of Democrats seems to be coalescing behind her, and she’s well-liked among primary voters. But she’s still not within striking distance of Joe Biden, who continues to hold a double-digit lead over the rest of the field.

Of course, that could change if Warren convinced a significant chunk of Democratic women voters to join her coalition. Women make up about 60 percent of Democratic primary voters and typically turn out at higher rates than men, and with only five women left in the race, Warren is carving out a space for herself on gender issues. She has announced ambitious plans to protect abortion rights, narrow the pay gap for women of color, establish universal child care and combat maternal mortality. And although Warren has struggled so far to gain support among black and Hispanic voters, she’s pitched many of her policies on gender specifically to women of color.

But is it realistic to expect Warren to win over women in the primary? A study by CBS News and YouGov conducted earlier this year found that Democratic women were much more likely to prioritize female candidates in a series of hypothetical matchups, but it turns out there’s very little evidence that women voters, as a group, tend to gravitate toward female candidates. That’s especially true in general elections, but it also likely holds for a race like the Democratic primary.

Warren is not overwhelmingly popular among women right now, but she has had a small, consistent edge among women in recent polls. Our average of national polls¹ taken between Aug. 1 and Sep. 1 do show Warren getting some extra support from women, though not to a huge degree. Women were 2.9 points more likely than men to support Warren on average, while both Biden’s and Harris’s backers were nearly identically split between men and women — with Biden getting the most backing from both groups. And according to Morning Consult’s weekly national primary poll, Biden’s support is particularly strong among black women, too.

There’s a certain resonance to the idea that women will rally around fellow women when they run for office — and recent polling has shown that Democratic women are particularly eager to elect a female president. But this doesn’t mean Warren — or any female candidate, for that matter — will overwhelmingly win women in the primary. For one thing, a gender gap in voting patterns may not tell us much about why women are supporting a particular candidate. Over the years, political scientists have found that even when women do vote for female candidates, it’s usually not because the candidate is a woman. Meanwhile, Warren’s emphasis on closing the wage gap or reducing maternal mortality might help her draw in more voters who care about gender discrimination, but those voters won’t just be women. After all, people’s reasons for voting are complicated, and women — even within a single party — are far from a monolithic voting bloc.

“What looks like women voting for women is usually just women voting for Democrats,” said Kathleen Dolan, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. There’s very little evidence, Dolan said, to suggest that the desire to vote for a woman, even one who’s strong on women’s issues, binds female voters together — or if that desire exists, it’s weaker than the other forces that affect their political decisions.

Yes, women are disproportionately likely to vote for Democratic candidates, and female candidates are also disproportionately likely to be Democrats. But what Dolan and others have found is that what often looks like gender solidarity is in large part good old-fashioned partisanship. Take a look at the results of the 2016 election, when a majority of white women voted for Trump over Hillary Clinton, or the 2008 election, when Sarah Palin’s presence on the ticket did little to entice Democratic women, and it’s clear that party loyalty trumps female solidarity.

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