Steve Kornacki: White men, white women and the gap within the gender gap
College-educated white women and white men without college degrees have come to exist in polar opposite political and cultural universes, each one unrelatable and probably unrecognizable to the other.
In last year’s presidential election, white voters made up an estimated 71% of the national electorate. That’s a number that for decades has trended downward as the country’s population has diversified, but it’s still more than six times larger than the share of Black and Hispanic voters (11% each) and nearly 25 times that of Asian voters (3%).
In other words, as a group, white voters continue to hold enormous sway, and that will persist for the foreseeable future. Typically, the white vote is understood as being Republican-friendly (President Donald Trump carried it by 15 points), with pronounced gender and education gaps. White men sided with Trump in 2024, while white women went with Kamala Harris; white voters who don’t have college degrees strongly backed Trump, while those with at least bachelor’s degrees backed Harris.
But there is a more useful — and revealing — way to understand the politics of white voters, something that is evident in the new NBC News poll. Call this the gap within the gap.
It represents a layering of the education gap (which has exploded during the Trump era) on top of the more established gender gap. When these are combined, a gaping chasm emerges — and two specific groups come into focus.
On one end are white men without four-year college degrees. This is a generally blue-collar demographic that is now deeply aligned with Trump and opposed to progressive politics. On the other end are white women with at least four-year college degrees. This is a more affluent demographic that has been racing leftward, particularly on cultural issues, and is squarely opposed to Trump.
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