Hillary Clinton says she never meant to cause offence by claiming white women voted Republican because of their husbands

Hillary Clinton has been forced to publish a lengthy explanation for recent comments that attracted the ire of Republicans and Democrats for suggesting that white women often voted the same way as their husbands.

During a trip to India, she also described how her voters tended to come from more wealthy areas than Trump voters.

Her candid views were reminiscent of the moment during the election campaign when she described Trump supporters as “deplorables”.

She took to Facebook at the weekend to say: 'I understand how some of what I said upset people and can be misinterpreted. I meant no disrespect to any individual or group.

“And I want to look to the future as much as anybody.”

The White House had earlier criticised her comments.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the president’s spokeswoman, said last week: “She is completely disconnected from the American public and certainly I think shows her disdain for the millions and millions of Americans who came out and voted and supported President Trump and still support him today.”

Some Democrats also expressed concern that she had spoken out at a time when they needed to win over Trump supporters ahead of November’s mid-term elections.

In particular she said the the party struggled to attract married, white women because of "a sort of ongoing pressure to vote the way that your husband, your boss, your son, whoever, believes you should".

However, in her explanation, Mrs Clinton said she had been asked whether Mr Trump was a “virus” or if his election was a symptom of some deeper problem in the US.

Her response, she said, was simply part of an attempt to analyse the election results.

“Like most Americans, people overseas remain shocked and dismayed at what they are witnessing daily,” she wrote. “My first instinct was to defend Americans and explain how Donald Trump could have been elected.”

People doing better economically tended to vote Democrat, she wrote, while those with less faith in the future tended to go Republican.

“That doesn't mean the coasts versus the heartland, it doesn't even mean states,' she said. 'In fact, it more often captures the divisions between more dynamic urban areas and less prosperous small towns within states.”

She continued to say that there was some research to suggest that women can be swayed more by men than the other way around.

“As much as I hate the possibility, and hate saying it, it’s not that crazy when you think about our ongoing struggle to reach gender balance – even within the same household,” she wrote.