Last night, as many of you know by now, Mitt Romney won an overwhelming victory in Florida, defeating Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, and Ron Paul by a margin of 46.4% – 31.9% – 13.4% – 7.0% respectively. Romney won the swing state with a higher percentage of the vote than he garnered in his birth state of New Hampshire (though, admittedly, there were more candidates in the race then).
A look into the demographic breakdown of the voting reveals several interesting trends, but none more overwhelming than how women voters broke for Mitt Romney. In a race where 49% of all voters were women, 51% went for Romney compared to only 29% for Gingrich and 13% for Santorum. This is a sharp turnaround from South Carolina, where Gingrich actually carried a plurality of women.
The reason that I bring this up is that women have actually made up a significant subset of swing voters in several of the last presidential elections. In 1996, politicians were fixated on wooing “soccer moms”, who many thought would be a key group of swing voters. Clinton went on to carry that group 53% – 39% on his way to defeating Bob Dole. In 2004, a similar focus was directed on “security moms”, and many believe that George W. Bush’s appeal to them helped guide his reelection bid.
I don’t mean this to say that Gingrich’s chances of winning a general election are hopeless, but given that subsets of women have been seen as swing voters in several of the last few presidential elections, Gingrich’s seemingly high negatives with women cannot be construed as anything but a detriment.
