Do Republican Women Support Kavanaugh?

[Algernon Moncrieff]

538

...(W)e found that results so far don’t show a reliable trend among GOP women’s views of Kavanaugh. Rather, there is quite a bit of noise among the three polls we looked at, which could partly be attributable to the larger margin of error attached to any results pulled from a subset of a poll. While the Politico/Morning Consult poll found that Kavanaugh’s net support among Republican women had dropped by 18 points, HuffPost/YouGov found a 12-point net gain among that same group, and YouGov/Economist found a smaller net gain of 2 points.

So what do we make of this? There are a number of reasons polls can vary significantly, including the technique used to contact respondents, the sample size, how the questions are worded and when the poll is taken. The Morning Consult polls had a fairly small sample size of Republican women,2 as did the other polls we assessed. This is common when surveying a subset of a population, but it can mean that, as we mentioned, the margin of error is somewhat larger for these groups than it is for the full sample.3 Another complicating factor is that the Morning Consult polls were being conducted while new allegations of Kavanaugh’s sexual misconduct were still emerging. As Jeff Cartwright, a managing director at Morning Consult, told us, “The thing about our poll is that it was coming out of the field just as that New Yorker story,” in which a college classmate accused Kavanaugh of shoving his penis in her face, “went up on Sunday, so it doesn’t even take that into account right now.” This means Kavanaugh’s support among conservative women could now be much worse (or much better) than these polls show. It’s still too early to tell.

That said, there is evidence that Kavanaugh’s public support declined this week, with recent polls showing his net approval rating anywhere between -3 and -6 points. Kavanaugh is a historically unpopular Supreme Court nominee, but if we go back to the beginning of July when polls first started asking about his confirmation, we can see that his net approval rating became increasingly negative in the days after the first allegations of sexual misconduct became public.

[vlyons]

1. Whether or not GOP women have turned against Kavanaugh,

most likely the entitled Junior League suburbanites probably find the whole situation "messy" and uncomfortable to even think about. I'm betting that they would prefer that he just go away, so they don't have to deal with talking about it, much less defend and support him. Don't forget, there's a lot of those women who have had their own experience with sexual abuse, and at the very least inoppropriate sex talk.

[Algernon Moncrieff]

2. My experience is that it's not the "junior league" types.

They tend to be better educated and aware.

My experience is that it is the suburban/rural woman with a HS diploma who thinks the two biggest problems this country has are athletes disrespecting our flag and all of the "illegals" she sees around town. She is, however, relieved that this nation's horrific pants sagging crisis seems to be coming to an end.

[Blue_true]

3. The ones proudly still in that party. Absolutely yes.

Just look at that Montana mother standing with her daughter's saying that guys feel up young women and that is normal, and her daughters wholeheartedly agreeing with her. Fortunately they are becoming a smaller and smaller minority.

[struggle4progress]

4. It's the well-known "off the cliff and heading down" trajectory