A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll isn’t an auspicious one for the GOP compared to where they stood in the last mid-term elections in 2014; the percentage of Americans with college degrees favoring Democrats is 16 points more than 2014, while Americans as a whole are 10 points higher favoring Democrats than they were three years ago.
Also disconcerting for the GOP is the fact that the 2010 elections, in which the GOP absolutely swamped the Democrats, featured a turn to the GOP among women, but women are currently swinging away from the GOP.
In 2014, the Democrats held a 12-point advantage among women; the new poll shows them with a 20-point lead. Additionally, among women with a four-year college degree, who comprise 15% of the entire voting population, women favoring the Democrats have a 32-point advantage, 62% to 30% for the GOP. As The Wall Street Journal notes, women with a four-year college degree “account for a larger share in 39 of the 60 or so House districts likely to have the most competitive races next year. In some, they account for as much as 28% of voting-age residents.”
David Wasserman, House elections editor for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, said the huge lead for the Democrats among college-educated women indicated “tsunami numbers’’ that could swamp the GOP in 2018. He suggested areas with a concentration of women with college degrees and men without them could be a major problem for the GOP; the Journal commented, “Some of those districts are urban-exurban areas that sit on the edge of cities such as Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Raleigh and Charlotte, N.C. “
There was a huge disparity among women with college degrees regarding President Trump; only 28% approved of his job performance, while 68% disapproved. Among women without degrees, Trump was underwater by 20 points; 38% approved while 58% disapproved.
