We hear about the gender gap after every election.
Women skew Democrat and men tend to vote Republican.
It was particularly pronounced in the midterm elections.
Senator Lindsey Graham narrowed it by pointing out that the demographic challenge for Republicans is suburban women.
National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru suggests that there is a conventional and persistent misunderstanding of the gender gap: we should really concentrate on the college degree gap.
The exits don’t give us a breakdown for suburban women, but they do let us look at college-educated white women and men. The women voted 49 percent for Republicans in 2016 and 39 percent in 2018. The men voted 60 percent for Republicans in 2016 and 51 percent in 2018. Republicans had a significant drop-off in support that was concentrated among college graduates — but was not especially concentrated among women.
I'm sure that Democrats would argue that supposedly "educated" voters are more likely to weigh the issues and cast their vote for a Democrat.
I would argue instead that colleges are now so left-leaning that students aren't taught to weigh issues but rather learn that the "enlightened" position on any issue is always the liberal or progressive one.
Indeed, students on prestige college campuses sometimes would rather riot than even listen to differing opinions.
The college graduates may also be turned off by the style of a party that is increasingly appealing to the values of working Americans who are not that enthralled with the more conventionally credentialed Americans who dominate New York and Washington.
Whatever the reason, Republicans seem to be facing a looming college degree gap that they would be wise to address.