Well, was the US presidential election the great betrayal? One headline in the papers today sums up that particular point of view: “White women killed off the first female president”. Well! Loaded or what? How else might you put it: White women fail their daughters? White women let down their own sex? White women Bend the Arc of History the Wrong Way? How about: White women vote on the basis of their economic interests, immigration and foreign policy and on the basis of the actual merits of the candidates? Just a thought.
The notion that women vote as a gender bloc may not survive this election. Thank God. Look at the data. No fewer than 44 per cent of women voted for Trump and 55 per cent for Harris, the precise opposite of the percentages for men. But 44 per cent is not a negligible number, no? It’s tens of millions of Americans. And indeed when you break it down in terms of ethnicity, over half, 52 per cent of white women voted for Trump and 47 per cent for Harris (quite a few dissidents voted for neither), a shift of a mere three points from what Joe Biden managed. So, white women voted in greater numbers for Trump than women of other ethnic backgrounds – 37 per cent of Latino women did so.
