Clinton Loses Young Women by More Than 60 Points in New Hampshire

One of the most notable things about the New Hampshire primary results on the Democrat side is how severely Hillary Clinton got trounced by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders among young people—especially young women. 

Sanders’ victory over Clinton in New Hampshire yesterday spans generations, of course, with Sanders getting 60 percent of the overall vote compared to Clinton’s 38.3 percent. And broken down into all sorts of demographic categories, Sanders still comes out on top; only the olds and the rich broke for Clinton.

According to The New York Times, Sanders “won among those with and without college degrees… among gun owners and non-gun owners… among previous primary voters and those participating for the first time… among both moderates and liberals.” Clinton and Sanders were tied among older Gen X’ers and younger boomers. Only Democratic voters 65 and older and those with a household income of more than $200,000 were resisting the Bern. 

Most interestingly, Clinton—who has long polled extremely well among women (leading by 20 points or more in Iowa and New Hampshire as recently as last fall) but less well with men—didn’t win over New Hampshire women Tuesday. Among female voters of all ages, Clinton lost by 11 percentage points. 

Among young female voters, the divide is even more stark: 82 percent of New Hampshire women under age 30 voted for Sanders, compared to just 18 percent for Clinton. Among male and female voters aged 17-29, Sanders took 84 percent of the vote. (For more on millennial love for Sanders—and Donald Trump—see “Why Donald and Bernie are Bae, Not Rand.”) 

As I noted here yesterday, the Clinton campaign has been striking a sour note with young women lately, as Hillary supporters have suggested millennial ladies only like Sanders because “the boys” do, that all attacks against Hillary are rooted in “sexism,” and that women who don’t support Clinton are probably going to hell. 

“In 2008, women helped fuel Clinton’s comeback win [in New Hampshire] against Barack Obama, backing her by double digits over her Democratic rival,” points out Carrie Dann at NBC News. It wasn’t all sunny with women and Hillary back then, either, however. In the Iowa caucuses, Obama took 35 percent of the Democratic women’s vote, while Clinton received 30 percent. “She did well only with women over 65,” The New York Times reported then. “While older women tend to vote in higher numbers than younger women, that’s still devastating news for her, since women were supposedly the backbone of her candidacy.” 

In 2008, Clinton fared worst among the youngest female voters in Iowa, losing the under-24 crowd to Obama by 40 percentage points and to John Edwards by 8 points. In national polls from around this time in the 2008 election cycle, Obama outranked voters under 30 by a margin of 56-42. The gender gap was smaller than it seems to be with Sanders, but Obama still beat Clinton among female voters under 30 by a margin of 53-45.