Hillary Clinton's Super Tuesday Wins Are the Perfect Start to Women's History Month
When Hillary Clinton first launched her presidential campaign, the female vote was hers to lose. Countless think pieces, pundits' speculation and Twitter storms later, however, this certainty has undeniably waned.
On Super Tuesday, the first day of Women's History Month, female voters countered this speculation with action, helping Clinton emerge victorious in seven states to Bernie Sanders' four.
Read more: Hillary Clinton Triumphs With Black Voters in the South After Weeks of Call-Outs
Women made all the difference in Clinton's domination of Virginia, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas, Texas and Massachusetts. The candidate won women by a 15-point margin in Massachusetts; about a 2:1 ratio in Georgia, Virginia and Texas; and secured the votes of two-thirds or more women in Alabama, Tennessee and Arkansas, ABC News reported Tuesday.
African-Americans and women particularly boosted Clinton's victories, a hardly surprising turn of events given the recent show of support from black voters, particularly black women. Clinton received 78% of the black female vote in Saturday's South Carolina primary, for example, a state where black women make up 37% of eligible voters, according to the Telegraph.
The support has perhaps been bolstered by Clinton's effort to incorporate powerful and influential black women's voices into her campaign, including policy expert Maya Harris, director of African-American outreach LaDavia Drane and feminist writer Zerlina Maxwell. The presidential hopeful also gave a notable speech on systemic racism in February and presented a $125 billion proposal to combat the issue.
"We're sophisticated voters, sophisticated thinkers, we're not just going to hand out our vote to anyone," Drane told Mic's Jamilah King in February. "I believe that [Hillary's] earning black voters' trust, [and] she's been doing it for a long time now."
Clinton's campaign is a historic accomplishment in and of itself. The candidate has overcome plenty of unwarranted, sexist attacks during her time in the public eye, but has still triumphed to become the first woman to win the Iowa caucus and arguably the closest woman to become the nation's first female president.
While the candidate didn't secure her party's nomination on Super Tuesday, as some speculated she might, that goal is now well within her reach.
"The stakes of this election have never been higher," she said to supporters in Miami Tuesday night, according to the Los Angeles Times. "The rhetoric we're hearing on the other side has never been lower. Trying to divide America between us and them is wrong and we are not going to let it work. Whether we like it or not, we are all in this together."
