The Hillary Clinton Gender Gap

Four years before the 2016 presidential election, and before we even know who is running, some enterprising pollsters have released polls matching Hillary Clinton against an assorted group of potential Republican candidates. Clinton does well; she leads in a number of red states.

In these polls, one interesting constant is the massive gender gap that Hillary Clinton opens up.

Here are as many 2016 polls that I could find. They show the gender gap in hypothetical match-ups between Clinton and various Republicans.

Comparatively, in 2012 women gave Barack Obama 55% of the vote, compared to the 45% that he won amongst men. The gender gap in that year was 10 points. In 2008 it was 7 points (Obama won 49% of males and 56% of females). The largest ever gender gap in recorded exit polling occurred in the 2000 presidential election, when Al Gore won only 42% of men but 54% of women.

It appears that Clinton would open a huge gender gap. The largest gender gap in this table (25 points) comes when she goes head-to-head against Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey. Christie’s brash style is very popular amongst men but much less so with women.

One point of caution is that the vast majority of these polls come from just one polling firm: Public Policy Polling (PPP). It’s possible that this gender gap is simply due to a mistake in the way PPP is polling. Interestingly, the two results with the lowest gender gaps (of two and four points) came from a national poll by McClatchy-Marist. So take caution in interpreting these results.

Nevertheless, as potentially America’s first female president, Clinton appears to be able to count strongly on the support of women.

P.S. Since the full table was too wide for WordPress, I took out a couple of sections. The full table is below.