How a key group — white women with a college degree — view Trump, the GOP and the midterms
The most recent NBC News/Wall Street poll shows that a key group of voters may be poised to play a big role in the upcoming election: White women with a college degree.
And they’re angry.
White women with a college degree did support Hillary Clinton over Trump in the 2016 election, but only by a six-point margin. According to exit polls, just over half supported Clinton — 51 percent — while 45 percent backed Trump and the remainder chose third party candidates.
But that narrow advantage for the Democratic candidate has grown into a gaping divide heading into the 2018 midterms, according to the latest NBC/WSJ poll.
President Trump’s positive favorability rating among college-educated white women, which stood just 32 percent when he was inaugurated, is now down even further to an even more dismal 27 percent, with 53 percent giving him a ‘very negative’ score. The Republican Party gets a similarly poor ranking, with just 23 percent within this group of women giving the GOP high marks. (They give Democrats a net positive score, on the other hand — 45 percent positive to 31 percent negative.)
And that ire also appears to be translating into energy against Republicans as the midterms approach.
Among white women with a college degree, Democrats have a 27 point advantage over Republicans on the question of which party they would rather win control of Congress in November.
And unlike some other voter groups like young people or independents, who show a preference for Democrats but don’t express high interest in the upcoming elections, this subgroup of women ranks among the highest when it comes to how closely they are watching the midterms. Six-in-ten report that they have high interest in the elections, one of the most pronounced levels of interest for any subgroup surveyed.
