Married female voters are repelled by GOP frontrunner Donald Trump and would heavily support former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a general-election contest, Tuesday’s Bloomberg Politics-Purple Slice poll has found.
The poll showed that the proportion of married women likely to vote in the general election who said they hold an unfavorable view of the outspoken Trump is a staggering 70 percent, set against only 27 percent who said they viewed him favorably.
Among married women likely to vote in the Republican primary, the poll found that Trump edges out Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) with 37 percent support to 32 percent. That five percentage-point lead is narrower than what he typically enjoys in surveys of the general population.
But in a general-election matchup against Clinton, Trump looks set to lose this historically conservative demographic: 48 percent of married women said they would support Clinton, compared to only 36 percent who said they would support Trump. By contrast, the poll found that this demographic would split evenly, 43 percent to 43 percent, if Cruz were the Republican nominee running against Clinton.
The poll indicates a broader context in which married female voters are simultaneously engaged with and disgusted by politics. Nearly all the major figures of American politics, including 2016 candidates and party eminences like former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, are perceived unfavorably by this demographic (although with margins dwarfed by how much Trump is abhorred). The only exceptions are Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) and, by a whisker, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). Despite this antipathetic atmosphere, 51 percent of married women said that they are more interested in this election than in previous cycles.
For comparison, among surveys of the whole population, TPM’s PollTracker Average shows Clinton at 41.9 percent and Trump at 33.9 percent in a head-to-head matchup.
The Bloomberg Politics-Purple Slice poll surveyed 603 married women likely to vote in the general election, with a margin of error of 4 percentage points, and 513 married women likely to vote in the Republican primary, with a margin of error of 4.3 percentage points. The poll was carried out from April 5-10 using an online survey.
