The four groups that will decide the election

In January, one Republican strategist told me the gender gap in a Trump-Clinton election could resemble the Grand Canyon. That prediction looks prescient. The key to the gender gap’s magnitude may be how far into traditionally Republican groups Trump’s troubles among women extend. He’s facing cavernous deficits among women of color, but that’s not particularly unusual for a GOP nominee. As already noted, he also seems virtually guaranteed to lose college-educated white women by the biggest margin for a Republican ever. But those women usually tilt Democratic, too, if not by such decisive margins: Although Obama lost them by six points in 2012, the Democratic nominee had carried them in four of the previous five elections.

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Trump would face even greater difficulties if he also cedes substantial ground among white women without a college education. These women, once described as “waitress moms,” are often economically strained and more culturally conservative than their white-collar counterparts, and they have typically leaned Republican. Bill Clinton in 1996 is the only Democratic presidential nominee to win them since 1980, and in each of the past three elections they have preferred the GOP nominee by at least 17 percentage points. Like the ordinarily Republican-leaning college-educated white men, these women have appeared torn between their partisan leanings and their ambivalence, if not hostility, toward Trump; both these groups have proven the most volatile in polling leading into the election. As of Saturday morning, the ABC News/Washington Post tracking poll showed Trump leading among these women by a resounding 34 percentage points, even greater than Reagan’s advantage in 1984; but an NBC News/SurveyMonkey poll released a few days earlier showed him holding a much more modest 12-percentage-point edge.

The marriage gap will be worth watching, too. Polls have shown Trump facing heavy resistance from single white women, who have voted Democratic in each election since 1992—although Obama’s margin among them sagged to just six percentage points in 2012, by far the smallest Democratic advantage over that period. Even more worrisome for Trump would be erosion among married white women, who have preferred Republicans in every election since 1984 and gave Romney a 25-percentage-point margin last time.

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Trump is guaranteed to win white men, though his difficulties among those with college degrees mean he may struggle to match Romney’s 27-point advantage among all white men in 2012, which was the highest for Republicans since 1988.

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