Compared to 1992, 2018 does look pretty badass. There will now be 126 women in Congress, a new high that includes 105 Democrats and 19 Republicans. And many of the elected women are pretty badass as individuals. They include Army and Air Force veterans, a military pilot, a former CIA agent, and a former CIA analyst.
But this year could just as appropriately be called the year of the Democratic woman -- and this should give Republicans pause heading toward 2020. The facts are stark: At all levels of government, many more women ran as Democrats than as Republicans. And female Democrats won nearly half the seats they contested, while Republican women won fewer than a quarter.
These results largely reflect the partisan gender gap that has characterized American politics for several decades, with women favoring Democrats much more strongly than men. Indeed, that gender gap has been the subject of much news coverage, and it is a real problem for the GOP.
But what should really worry Republicans is the growing convergence between men and women in their support for gender equality and willingness to penalize politicians who tolerate sexist views.
Since 1977, the General Social Survey has tracked attitudes toward women in politics, mothers in the workforce and gender arrangements in the home. In 2016, the last year for which we have data, support for gender equality reached its highest level ever.
By 2016, three-quarters of all Americans agreed that women are as capable in politics as men and that working mothers could have relationships with their children that were as secure and warm as those of stay-at-home moms.
Two-thirds rejected the idea that men should be the primary breadwinners and women the primary parents. And here is a key point: The difference between men and women on these questions hit an all-time low -- largely, sociologist David Cotter notes, because men had been "catching up with women's egalitarian attitudes."
Back in 2016, though, many voters prioritized issues other than support for women's equality, like military spending, immigration, government regulation, religion, free trade and tariffs. A study by Tufts University political scientist Brian Schaffner found that in the 2016 election, voters' approval or disapproval of sexist statements had little predictive power on whether they voted for a Republican House candidate.
This November, however, was different: After two years of the #MeToo Movement, energetic efforts of activists to shine a spotlight on sexist attitudes and policies, and the often dismissive response of the Republican Party leadership, priorities shifted. This time, Schaffner found, "less-sexist voters punished Republican House candidates in a way they did not in 2016."
Unlike in 2016, both men and women moved away from support for Republican candidates. The gender gap still had a huge impact on the election outcome because women moved faster and further than men. Overall, 59% of American women cast their ballots for Democrats while only 40% voted for Republicans, an unprecedented margin of 19 percentage points and nearly twice the margin by which women favored Democrats in 2016.
White college-educated women increased their vote margin for Democrats by 13 points, but this time, white working-class women without a college degree increased their support for Democrats by an equal amount, and they constituted a larger percentage of voters.
What's more, this time men also moved away from the Republican Party, even though they started much closer to it and therefore didn't get as far. In 2016, men had preferred Trump to Clinton by 12 percentage points. This November they preferred Republicans by only 4 points, a threefold decrease.
True, white men without a college degree remained strongly Republican, but their support for the GOP also weakened significantly. In Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio and Missouri, the Republican margins of victory among white men without a college degree were at least 20 points lower this year than in 2016.
The Republicans' lock on rural areas also became more precarious, especially among younger voters. The party's victory margin among those 18 to 29 in rural areas was 25 points lower in 2018 than in 2016.
The age gap may become more critical than the gender gap in future elections. It already seems increasingly unfavorable to politicians who embrace racism or sexism. Thirty-one percent of eligible young people aged 18 to 29 cast ballots in the midterms, compared with just 21% in 2014. And they voted for Democrats by a whopping 35-point margin, compared with a 14-point margin in the 2016 House races.
The highest level of support for Democrats was among the youngest voters, those 18 to 24. Sixty-eight percent of them voted Democrat, compared with 66% of 25-to-29-year-olds.
If you think millennials are making it perilous for politicians to promote sexism and racism, just wait until what the Pew Research Center calls the "post-millennial" generation, now 6 to 21 years old, comes of age.
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