Of course, you can slice and dice the white-women category however you like: married women, single women, lesbians, evangelicals, wiccans, thrice-married celebutante Chihuahua-breeders with breast implants and an allergy to gluten. But the overall white-woman gap in Republicans’ favor is what it is—and what it has been for several presidential cycles.

So what people are really asking isn’t as simple as, “Why didn’t white women go for Hillary?” It is the more complicated, “Why did Hillary fail to convince white women—who, in aggregate, typically vote Republican—to switch teams and back her instead?”

There are as many answers to that question as there are white chicks in America. But many of those reasons fall roughly into a couple of broad categories.

Most fundamentally, women voters are complicated. It is a cliché, because it is true. In terms of providing an electoral identity or sense of community, gender doesn’t get you very far. Sure, there are touchstone “women’s issues” that motivate many gals (including reproductive rights, paid family leave, and equal pay). But there are also plenty of women who are passionately pro-life or who don’t get as fired up about, say, child care as about taxes or immigration or national security.

Issues aside, what of Trump’s appalling statements about and mistreatment of women over the years? Even if white women vote Republican in an ordinary presidential cycle, Trump, to put it gently, was not an ordinary candidate.

This underscores another political reality: In hyperpolarized America, hard-core partisans—particularly those who have been out of power for several years—don’t switch teams over the personal shortcomings of their champion. Many Republican-base voters dug what Trump was selling in general, so they chose to overlook the icky personal behavior.

Plus, since Trump has always been a carnival barker of sorts, many other supporters simply dismiss his boorishness and self-aggrandizing babble as part of his reality-TV, alpha male swagger. Others (particularly on the right end of the spectrum) are so thrilled to see someone giving the finger to what they feel is political correctness run amok, that they accept (or even embrace) his “locker-room talk” as one piece of a grand era of anti-PC sanity he will usher in.

As for the independents and fence-sitters who ultimately went Trump: For many, the intense craving for change eclipsed the nominee’s personal grossness. He promised to “drain the swamp,” to disrupt a political system that pretty much everyone agrees is dysfunctional; everything else took a back seat. Voters reasoned that Trump isn’t really that much of a pig, or that he is a pig but it won’t affect his ability to get stuff done (might even help him!), or that, even if it does, it’s worth it. In some ways, this is the latest, most graphic iteration of a long-running debate over whether a personally reprehensible individual can be an effective leader. A lot of gals decided it was worth the gamble.