On November 8 Americans will go to the polls to elect either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton as their next President and *spoiler alert* it will probably be Hillary Clinton.
Renowned poll and probability guru Nate Silver currently puts the odds at 86.6% for a Clinton victory and just a 13.4% chance of a Trump victory.
That broadly matches what betting markets have as Trump’s odds of winning.
In the US presidential election, it’s uncomfortable but an increasingly important truism that demographics determine elections.
President Obama’s wins in 2008 and 2012 were significant because of the broad coalition of minorities he was able to get to the polls in a country where voter turnout is a decisive factor in elections.
Single women and non-white voters were key for Obama.
Obama only got 39% of the white vote in 2012, but more than made up for it with large leads among minorities.
In 2016, with the likely election of Hillary Clinton, women will be key to a Democratic victory.
Obama's 2008 campaign focused on a coalition of minorities to overcome a deficit in support among white voters. Source: Getty Images
Hillary Clinton is likely to lose the white vote and the male vote but the campaign is counting on the votes of women to make up for the deficit.
It’s one of the reasons the release of the Access Hollywood tapes, in which Trump is heard to brag about his ability to grab and fondle women, is so disastrous for the Republican nominee.
It’s why other Republicans are so extremely frustrated by his tone-deaf insults to women over their weight of physical appearance.
More than anything else, it’s Trump’s unpopularity with women that will likely lose him this election.
These two tweets show the divide with the greatest clarity:
Those maps equate to a 22 percentage point gap between the genders.
If that is reflected on November 8, it will be the largest gender gap ever witnessed in an American election.
In Male America, Donald Trump would win by a landslide, beating Clinton by 11 points. In Female America, Clinton would win by an even bigger landslide, with a 33 point lead.
Two alternate realities in an already divided country.
But still, many have noted it would be a deliciously fitting end to a campaign rocked by misogyny if women prove to be the decisive voting block.
Electing the first female President in an electorate deeply split by gender may not be ideal, but there’s a certain poetic justice to such a victory in this election cycle.
The gender voting split isn’t new – the gap has been evident in the US electorate .
Women could be Donald Trump's undoing this November. Source: AAP
Obama lost the majority of men but won a majority of women in both elections, and Democrats have developed tightly focussed messaging on women’s issues.
Republican positions on abortion and funding for women’s healthcare have been branded a ‘War on Women’ by Democrats and affiliated groups such as Emily’s List.
Republicans have done themselves no favours either, in 2012 a Republican Missouri Senate candidate said he believed a woman couldn’t become pregnant in cases of ‘legitimate rape’.
The comments reverberated nationally and gave new energy to the Democratic incumbent, Senator Claire McCaskill.
But this year, with the nomination of Donald Trump, the gender gap has become a chasm, particularly among the voter demographic that forms the foundation of the Republican Party’s support: white voters.
A woman uses a smart phone to photograph Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Source: AAP
In 2012 Mitt Romney won 56% of white women, but that support has collapsed under Donald Trump, falling to 47% .
That was in May, before the release of the ‘Trump tapes’ and multiple allegations of sexual assault.
It’s interesting to note that at the time, those white women weren’t necessarily flocking to Clinton, whose numbers sat on a par with Obama’s 2012 numbers, at around 43%.
It seems that developments over recent weeks may be changing that, as the debates and Trump tape revelations crystallise the opinions of undecided and independent voters.
If Clinton does become the first female President-elect on November 8, it will have been millions of women across the country who brought her over the line.
