Exclusive poll: Women are more pessimistic about economy than men

Women are far more pessimistic about the state of the U.S. economy than men: Nearly half of female voters rate the U.S. economy as "not so good" or "poor," compared to only 26% of men, according to a new SurveyMonkey/S&P Global Post-Election poll given first to Axios.

Why it matters: There's already a large gender gap as women drifted away from the GOP in the midterm elections. If this many female voters are concerned about the country's economic future, that could undermine President Trump's economic messaging in 2020, too.

The big picture: A record number of women were elected to Congress this year. Women are also becoming increasingly politically active at all levels of government and are poised to shift the political landscape — and priorities — across the country.

By the numbers:

• Women are more concerned about the direction of the economy than men, 70% to 58%.
• 23% of women say they are now worse off than they were two years ago (15% of men say the same), and 28% describe their families as falling behind financially (compared to 18% of men).
• Women trust Democrats by an 11-point margin over Republicans to better fight for economic policies that benefit their families (this number was even higher among young women), while men trust the GOP over Dems by the same margin. Among both genders, 26% say they trust neither side.
• Health care is the most important issue for women, dwarfing other animating issues such as "jobs and the economy," which was the most important issue for men.

The bottom line: Trump and the Republican Party have already seen a decline in female voters. They can't afford to lose more over an issue that should be one of their greatest strengths.

Go deeper:

• The S&P Global Post-election report
• We're not even close to gender parity in Congress
• Trump's 2020 woman problem

Methodology: This analysis is based on a SurveyMonkey online poll conducted among adults ages 18 and older in the United States. Respondents were selected from the more than 2 million people who take surveys on the SurveyMonkey platform each day. Data have been weighted for age, race, sex, education, and geography using the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey to reflect the demographic composition of the United States age 18 and over.

This survey was conducted November 7-14, 2018 among 7,467 adults. The modeled error estimate for the full sample is plus or minus 1.5 percentage points and full crosstabs are available here.