In the last couple of days, there has been a lot of talk about how the gender gap cost Mitt Romney the election, and also about how Caucasian males, in deserting Obama en masse, are swimming against history. In certain circles, a commonly asked question is: “What’s up with white men?” Writing in Thursday’s Times, Gail Collins called older white guys “the biggest loser demographic of the election.” Yesterday, one female friend confided to me: “They are strange, white men.”

That may well be true. I, for one, know a lot of weird white dudes, and the fact that Romney led Obama in their demographic by twenty-seven points—sixty-two per cent to thirty-five per cent—amply justifies all the attention it is receiving. But it turns out that, purely on the basis of their voting patterns, a similar question could also be asked about white women, or most of them. One of the least commented-upon aspects of the election returns is that well over fifty per cent of Caucasian females voted for Romney, too. Not as many of them as white men, of course, but a solid majority. Indeed, as a proportion of the total, more white women voted for Romney on Tuesday than voted for George W. Bush, in 2004, or for John McCain, in 2008.

To be sure, these voters weren’t, in the main, the sort of women who write for the Times, or even read it. Among white female college graduates, Obama voters may have been in the majority. (In the versions of the national exit poll that I have seen, that category isn’t broken down.) But the fact remains that white females, taken as a whole, went solidly Republican. While the overall gender gap played a significant role in ensuring Obama’s reëlection, it didn’t have very much to do with white women, who remain one of the bulwarks of the Republican Party.

You don’t believe me? Here are some figures from this year’s exit poll, which the Edison Research company conducts for a consortium of media companies, and from previous ones. In 2004, Bush got fifty-five per cent of the white female vote, and Kerry got forty-four per cent—a “reverse gender gap” (one working in the G.O.P.’s favor) of eleven points. In 2008, McCain got fifty-three per cent of the white female vote, and Obama got forty-six per cent—a gap of seven points. Compared to four years earlier, the reverse gender gap in this demographic had decreased by four points, indicating that the Democrats were making progress in attracting the votes of white women. But this year, that trend turned around again. Far from narrowing further, the reverse gender gap among white women widened to fourteen points. Romney got fifty-six per cent of the white female vote; Obama got just forty-two per cent.

When I first saw these figures, I was surprised, too. How could Obama have done so poorly among white women and yet carried the overall female vote by eleven points—fifty-five per cent to forty-four per cent? The answer is that white females make up a smaller proportion of the overall electorate than they used to—thirty-eight per cent in 2012 compared to forty-one per cent in 2004—and Obama racked up enormous majorities among non-white women, who are growing in numbers. Ninety-six per cent of black women voted for Obama; seventy-six per cent of Hispanic women voted for him; and so did sixty-six per cent of women of other races, including Asians. Since about one in six voters is now a non-white woman, those votes were enough to cancel out the reverse gender gap among white women and turn the female vote as a whole into one of the key elements of Obama’s victory.

Even then, though, the gender gap needs interpreting carefully. It isn’t accurate to say that women as a whole are suddenly turning their backs on the G.O.P., and that this explains Romney’s defeat. The gender gap isn’t anything new. According to the exit polls, it was actually a bit bigger in 2008, when Obama got fifty-six per cent of the female vote and John McCain got forty-three per cent. Given the margin of error attached to these polls, a difference of two points—a thirteen per cent gender gap in 2008 versus an eleven per cent gender gap in 2012—isn’t statistically meaningful. But it indicates that Romney did make a bit of progress in attracting female voters, even as his own evolving stance on abortion and birth control, as well as the outrageous remarks of Republicans like Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock, made his task more difficult.

And that progress was wholly due to his success in appealing to white women. If Romney had exhibited similar strength in appealing to non-white females, particularly Hispanics, it would have made a big difference, but he couldn’t manage it. To the contrary, he did worse than his Republican predecessors. In 2004, more than a third of Hispanic women voted for Bush, and in 2008, thirty per cent of them voted for John McCain. This year, just twenty-three per cent of Hispanic women voted for Romney.

Why did so many white women vote for Romney despite his shift to the right on women’s issues during the G.O.P. primaries? One way to tackle this question is to ask why so many white men voted for him. Surely, many of the same factors that motivated white male Romney supporters played into the decision-making of white female Romney supporters. After all, in many cases, the members of the two groups are married to each other, and are shaped by the same cultural and economic environment. (To be clear, I am not suggesting that white women vote Republican because their husbands do. Women make up their own minds.)

Without much doubt, attitudes about race—and even outright racism—played a role, although one that is hard to quantify. But it’s far from the only thing. Income is important. On average, white men and women tend to be richer than non-whites, and voting Republican is strongly correlated with income. (In families that made less than a hundred thousand dollars a year, Obama won by eight points. In families that made more than a hundred thousand dollars a year, Romney won by ten points.) Age is another factor. Whites, on average, tend to be older than non-whites, and older people (male and female) tend to vote Republican in greater numbers. Religion is also part of the story. Most white women, like most white men, are churchgoing Christians, a group that is strongly Republican—especially evangelicals, who voted for Romney by almost four to one. Then there is ideology. Just as there are conservative men, there are conservative women.

Of course, all these factors were also present in 2008. The reason Romney did a bit better than McCain among white women is probably that they viewed him as a stronger candidate on economic issues, which are as important to women as to men. Or maybe they just saw him as a more plausible President than the aging war hero.

The key point is that voting against Obama wasn’t just a white-guy thing. A whole range of racial, cultural, and economic factors contribute to the dislike of the President among various chunks of the white population—particularly the chunk that resides inland and away from the big cities. White men may be particularly prone to Obama-phobia, but they aren’t the only ones. Unfortunately, many of their wives, daughters, and girlfriends feel the same way.

Photograph by Chip Litherland.