Pollsters Anna Greenberg and Dan Cox said on Monday that President Trump and Republicans are losing young women to Democrats permanently.
“When you ask millennial women who are likely voters, about 65, 68 percent would actually vote for a Democrat in the generic congressional race, so that puts them as base Democratic voters,” Greenberg, a partner at Greenberg, Quinlan, Rosner, told Hill.TV’s Krystal Ball on “What America’s Thinking.”
“What we know is that in your coming of age years, from sort of your teens into your early 20s, have a profound, long-term impact on what your partisanship and voting patterns are for the rest of your life,” she continued.
“So, not only in this moment are these millennial women heavily, heavily Democratic and heavily hostile to Trump, but it’s likely that they are going to sort of be the vanguard of, I think, the feminization of the Democratic Party,” she said.
Cox, the research director at the Public Religion Research Institute, agreed with Greenberg, adding that young, millennial women do not believe Trump supports them on some of the issues they care about.
“I think we’re seeing something pretty unique among young women here, separate from young men. We’re seeing a growing gender divide among this age group, and I think a lot of this has to do with Trump, but not exclusively,” he said.
“This is a generation and an age group that is not enamored with the president, but young women particularly when it comes to reproductive health issues, and other concerns, they think that Trump’s just not on their side.”
A Pew Research Center study released earlier this year found that the number of women who identify with the Democratic Party rose from 54 percent in 2016 to 56 percent in 2017.
Increased support among women could give Democrats the leverage they need to make gains in the November midterm elections.
