Here’s the good news: Democratic primary voters are generally less sexist than other Americans. Here’s the bad news: There are still some very sexist Democratic primary voters. In fact, according to new data, more than one-quarter of Democratic primary voters score higher than average on “hostile sexism”—and those people’s sexism is affecting their presidential primary votes.
YouGov surveyed Democratic primary voters to assess their hostile sexism (things like believing that “women are too easily offended”), and to find out their preferred 2020 candidates. The results shouldn’t be surprising, but they’re important for understanding dynamics in the Democratic primary. ”Among the least sexist voters, [Joe] Biden and [Elizabeth] Warren are neck-and-neck; among the most sexist Democratic primary voters, Biden is preferred by as much as a four-to-one margin,” YouGov’s Sam Luks and Tufts University’s Brian Schaffner write. “Warren’s support drops from nearly 30 percent among the least sexist voters to less than 10 percent among those who are most sexist. [Kamala] Harris’s support drops from around 15 percent among the least sexist voters to less than 5 percent among those who are most sexist.”
That’s a big drop in support for women as you move to the sexist end of the scale, and it’s not just Warren and Harris. Through the field as a whole, “about 40 percent of the candidates considered by the least sexist Democratic primary voters are women, but among the most sexist Democratic primary voters that figure drops below 20 percent.” So there are a lot of people out there who are lying when they say they’ll vote for a woman, just not that woman (whoever that woman may be at any given moment). And it’s a big challenge—electoral and moral—for the Democratic Party.