Somebody call the manager — according to New York Times/Siena College polling, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has the "Karen" vote locked down.
On Monday,The New York Times released data from two months of polling that showed how respondents planned to vote, which they made sortable by common first names — and according to polling, women named Karen planned to vote for Biden by a 60% to 40% margin.
The support for Biden among women named Karen represented the largest split of any of the top 10 male and female names recorded by The Times. Men named Richard represented the biggest advantage in the top 10 lists for President Donald Trump, as they supported the President 64% to 36%.
Interestingly, men named "Donald" were much more likely to support Trump by a wide margin — 68% to 19% — while men named "Joseph" were evenly split between the candidates at 45%.
The names also seem to represent the candidates splits among genders — on Sunday, Don Levy, the Director of the Siena College Research Institute, said that Trump leads by eight points among men, while Biden leads by 18 points among women.
"Karen" is the nickname most often given to white women — particularly those who are the subject of viral videos — who respond to issues of race in problematic ways.
Though the "Karen" meme has murky origins, the term exploded into the mainstream lexicon in 2020 after several videos featuring white women confronting people of color went viral. Among them was a video of a white woman who called police on a Black birdwatcher who had asked the women to leash her dog in New York's Central Park, and a California CEO who accosted a man who had stenciled the words "Black Lives Matter" on a home he was renting.
In San Francisco, a law proposed this year called the CAREN Act would make it illegal to make racially prejudiced 911 calls within the city limits.
The Times conducted its poll with more than 17,000 likely voters, and its list only included names with more than 30 respondents.
Click here to see the New York Times' entire name database.
