Thread by @bernybelvedere

Here are some recent headlines:

▪️ White Women Vote Republican. Get Used To It, Democrats.
▪️ Why Do White Women Keep Voting for the GOP and Against Their Own Interests?
▪️ White Women, Come Get Your People

Big yikes on the underlying political reasoning here.

These headlines, and countless ones like them, are suggestive of a consolidated demographic bloc, of an electoral monolith. But of course that's not the case at all.

For both conceptual and empirical reasons, the right takeaway is white women are *not* an electoral monolith.

Conceptually because in a political system like ours, and in a country our size, it is very rare to see a demographic group become so overwhelmingly partisan that it can fruitfully be described as a monolith.

It does happen, but it’s the exception.

Our identities are multifaceted things, and it's unlikely, in our political system, for us to see one of those layers—or, in this case, a combo of those layers: white womanhood—overwhelm all the others and optimize a demographic category into a flawlessly unified political bloc.

Even a trend across multiple elections doesn't tell us much. The very fact and frequency of our recurring elections means parties have ongoing opportunities to win over voters. Doesn't make sense to politically fix a demographic group in a sort of final and settled way.

But also empirically because Trump will likely end up winning white women by 10 or so points.

No matter what has happened historically, those margins are low enough to suggest a gettable group and obviously justify aggressive outreach for 2022 and beyond.

As @jonathanchait pointed out in this piece, since demographic groups are not "winner take all," there is no sense in candidates or parties treating them the way they treat states.

nymag.com/intelligencer/…

For a useful contrast, Biden won black women by 80 points. To be sure, as a share of the electorate, white women are a far larger group. But the monolith talk has to do with *consolidation*, not with *total share of the vote*.

This was another excellent piece on the topic by @katrosenfield in @ArcDigi

arcdigital.media/fear-of-a-whit…