The Infuriating History of White Women Voting Against Womens Rights

The 2016 presidential election results were supposed to be history-making. A week before voting day, NPR ran a story with headline "The Gender Gap In This Election Could Be The Biggest In At Least 60 Years," prognosticating that women could vote more liberally in 2016 than they had ever before. Like much of the pre-election coverage in left-leaning outlets, the article had a hopeful message: Hillary Clinton, our first female presidential candidate, would likely become our first female president, ushered into power with the vociferous support of women.

According to three national polls cited in the NPR article, it was clear that "women [preferred] Clinton...while men [preferred] Trump." Since 1980, a higher proportion of women have gone to the polls than men in every presidential election, and exit polls have consistently shown that women voted far more heavily Democratic in each one.

In this year's election, it was estimated that the "gender gap"—the difference in the percentage of women who vote for any given candidate when compared with men—could total a whopping 25 points. The article wasn't far off. According to Clinton super PAC pollster Geoff Garin, the 2016 gender gap was 24 points wide—a number that, read alone, conveys that women in general preferred Clinton. Overall, according to the National Election Pool, 54 percent of women voters filled in the bubble next to Clinton-Kaine. Forty-two percent picked Trump-Pence.

Read more: What You Need to Know to Call Your Representative About Trump

But that statistic does not show that 93 percent of black women who voted supported Clinton, that 67 percent of Hispanic women who voted supported Clinton, and that 78 percent of other non-white women who voted supported Clinton. It also doesn't show that just 43 percent of white women who voted supported Clinton, while the majority—53 percent—supported Donald Trump, a blatant misogynist, racist, and xenophobe.