If any group in the ultimate Donald Trump coalition was unexpected, it was the group of suburban women who stuck with him after a year’s worth of campaigning designed to cleave them away from the Republican column.
With Hillary Clinton seeking to break the glass ceiling and become the first female president, and a boorish septuagenarian billionaire on the other ticket, it would have seemed only natural that the 2016 election would see a gender gap far larger than normal, with women siding with the Democratic Party in even greater numbers. Except that’s not what happened.
From Clinton’s first day on the national stage as a fresh college graduate who gave a widely noted commencement address at Wellesley College, to her tenure as a globally respected secretary of state, she was seen as the poster image of the women’s movement—the paragon of the barrier-breaking generation. Her second campaign for president ran on that premise exactly, targeting women in both parties with explicitly gender-based appeals. On the attack, her campaign’s targets were educated Republicans and independents in the suburbs whose sensibilities were offended by Trump’s coarse manner and impulsive, often inappropriate, rhetoric.
Clinton’s strategy worked to a point, but not nearly well enough to secure her the presidency. While Trump’s margin among college-educated white women was below the Republican norm, those defections were not enough to deny him the electoral votes of every swing state in the Great Lakes region, plus Florida and North Carolina. Because she and her campaign team bet their entire strategy on this group and failed to get the margin they needed, the Silent Suburban Mom is an important archetype in the Trump coalition.
Younger than most of the coalition, less religiously conservative, one out of four in this group reported they had voted for Obama in either 2008 or 2012, according to the Great Revolt Survey of Trump voters in the Great Lakes swing states. Almost half of them were uncomfortable telling friends they were voting for Trump during the campaign, because they feared disapproval. They’re less pro-life than the rest of the Trump coalition, but only slightly so. They are also less likely to cite the Supreme Court as a critical factor in their vote for Trump.
As long as Trump is the face of the emerging populist-conservative coalition, this group will remain on its margins—and at the center of the electoral combat between the two parties.