US election Will white women's shift to the left prove decisive?

White female voters have been the backbone of the Republican party for decades - but polls indicate their support may be faltering, thanks to younger white women who are moving steadily leftwards.

- Carter Sherman

After the 2016 presidential election, media outlets seized on white women to explain Donald Trump's shock win: 47% of white women voted for him, while 45% backed Hillary Clinton, according to the Pew Research Center.

Over the last 72 years, white women backed the Democratic candidate only in 1964, when Lyndon B Johnson won 44 states, and in 1996, when Bill Clinton ran in a three-way race. Trump's lead with white women even grew in 2020, when 53% supported him.

In contrast, 95% of black women voted for Joe Biden in 2020, along with 61% of Hispanic women, Pew found.

But quite a bit has changed since 2020 - especially for women. The US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022, transforming abortion rights into a major election issue. Kamala Harris took over as the Democratic candidate from Biden, becoming the first woman of colour to secure a major-party nomination for president.

Will 2024 be the year that white women, who make up almost 40% of the national electorate, join women of colour in supporting the Democrats? There are signs that younger white women are peeling off from the Republican party - a trend linked to a steady drift by all young women to the left. "Young women of colour and young white women, in my research, are pretty uniformly liberal and feminist," said Melissa Deckman, the CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute and author of The Politics of Gen Z: How the Youngest Voters Will Shape Our Democracy.