Talk Elections

If it's a women like the Maine senators or someone that pro-choice and moderate socially, yes, I can see the GOP winning the women vote. If not, it stays the same as the current state for the GOP grab for the women vote.

No.

Women skew poorer and less educated, not good for the GOP.

Yes, if the election is a blow-out and the GOP wins the male vote by more.

Women are becoming more educated then men. Especially in the demographics of poor whites, blacks and hispanics. It's even in rich whites and asians.

Didn't they almost win it in '04?

Kerry 51%, Bush 48%.  Bush had gotten 43% in 2000 against Gore.

I'm sure many Republican candidates could do better than that, so yes.

A GOP candidate doesn't need to be pro-choice to win the "women's vote" - (whether you define that as a majority of women or more women than men voting Republican). What he/she needs to do is give some sense of compassion - "I feel your pain" stuff - Giving a sense of strength without being belligerent helps too.

Of course. Women aren't overwhelmingly democrats like blacks or hispanic. I'm sure Reagan and Bush'88 won the women's vote, and so would a republican winning by the margin they won.

Similarly, didn't Obama and Clinton win the male vote ?

Obama did but Clinton, I think no. Reagan and Bush 88 lost the female vote from study's I've read on female voting patterns.

Clinton won the male vote in '92 but not '96 (Dole +1). Republicans won female voters in all three Reagan-era elections, but very narrowly in '80 and '88.

http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/elections/presidential/presidential_election.html

Thanks DarthNader. Surprise that female and the youth were Republican back in the 1980's but it was the era of Reagan-Bush 41, which was very popular at the time.

White women went McCain by 7.  Hispanic  women went Obama by 38 and black women went Obama by 93.  Looking at the 2008 results, there is virtually no difference between the white male and white female vote, with the exception of New England, where it appears white males and white females were watching 2 different elections.  That wasn't the case in the rest of the county.

White males and white females voted Obama in Rhode Island, Vermont and Massachusetts.

They did, but here was the breakdown.  White males (WM) in Rhode Island tied 48-48.  White females (WF) went 66-33 Obama, a 33 point gender difference. 

Vermont WM was 63-33 Obama, WF was 71-28 Obama, an 13 point difference.  Bigger than the national average, but not that big for New England.

Mass WM was 53-46 Obama and WF was 65-33, a 25 point difference.

The national average was about a point 9 gender difference.  Without New England, it would probably be 3-4 points.  Why is there such a big separation in the sexes in New England?  I am genuinely curious.  I made a map charting gender differences, but I don't yet have enough posts to display it.

My guess would be the men are more likely to vote based on "fiscal responsibility" and "small government" in New England, while the women are more likely to emphasize "social justice."

It could also be that more women work and are well-educated in New England, which translates to feelings of independence from the views of men.

My guess would be the men are more likely to vote based on "fiscal responsibility" and "small government" in New England, while the women are more likely to emphasize "social justice."

It could also be that more women work and are well-educated in New England, which translates to feelings of independence from the views of men.


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I may agree with you as to the first part, but that is more on gut feeling than any empirical evidence.  I'm not sure that prior to Obama's inauguration, there was any indication he would be a bigger spender that W.  McCain, I believe, was widely perceived as carrying on W's legacy of "compassionate conservatism" a/k/a big spending conservative, so I'm not sure "fiscal responsibility" pushed people towards McCain.  In fact, those voters who were very concerned about the economy went 60-38 for Obama.

Either way, I disagree with you on the second statement.  I have no indication that New England white females are any more educated than West Coast white females.  RI, VT and MA had a 33, 13 and 25 point gender difference, respectively, but CA, OR and WA had a 9, 6 and 2 point gender disparity, respectively.  If you compare those voters in RI, VT and MA with bachelors or post graduate degrees, you get 47%, 52% and 47%, respectively, to those in CA, OR and WA, at 49%, 45% and 48%, respectively, they have a substantially similar level of higher education. (The national average was 45%).

So both the Pacific west and New England voters were slightly above the national average in college degrees, both politically liberal, yet the Pac west averaged less than a 6 point gender difference, while New England averaged nearly a 25 point difference.  If whites voted with a gender consistency seen in the rest of the US, NY, NH and ME come into play for McCain (though still probably go to Obama), while CT might tip to McCain.

Who is this person creeping in on my name?  :P

Then why would some "fiscal conservative" vote for McCain, when he would be a big spender on the government? Not saying Obama is the opinion but I think fiscal conservatives would stay out of the election.

I'm pulling this out of my ass, but I'm speculating that sex appeal has a little bit to do with how women in New England vote.  After all, a prominent tall and handsome Democratic candidate from the 1950's and 1960's liked tea parties.  And for good reason. (http://www.nps.gov/jofi/womensvote.htm)

Not to mention, how many comparisons the media made between aforementioned Captain Sexy Abs and Barack Obama.

Ha!  Sorry on the creep.  It's hard to pass up a good name.  I may now have the required posts to post my own map.  If so, I may try posting it tonight.

JFK won the male vote back in 1960, where Richard Nixon won the female vote, though the gap of both gender was extraordinary small.

Wow, that's pretty shocking.

Yeah, when I read the results of that online I stared at the screen and went WTF. Then again, the Republican were actually the female dominated party until the feminist movement of the late 60's-early 70's that switched females from Republicans to Democrats.

Where is the "gender gap" the smallest, regionally?

Minnesota? S**t, I don't know.

IIRC Ford won the female vote in 76, while Carter won the male vote.

DarthNader says otherwise. Who knows?

If my memory served correct, I believe the swath of smallest gender difference started in New Jersey, went largely through the south and southern great plains and ended in California.  I remember NJ, MO, LA (in LA WF may have voted more GOP than WM) and the Pacific West being the least amount of difference.  The biggest gap was in New England, followed by the upper mid-west and upper Great Plains.  I think Alaska also had a large gender gap.

Hopefully, I'll get the map up tonight.

I've actually heard the same thing RE: Ford, but both the Roper link and this one (http://elections.nytimes.com/2008/results/president/national-exit-polls.html) have Carter getting the same percentage with both genders. In any case, '80 appears to mark the start of the present-day "gender gap".

I think the reason for a bigger "gender gap" in New England is because the two parties aren't as polarized in New England.

I mean, in the South or West, for example, the parties are more polarized. So you are less likely to have people from the same household splitting tickets.

Also, women probably don't marry as early in New England as say, the South (in other words, they remain single longer, which translates to more single female voters). Thus, they aren't really influenced by a conservative husband/partner.

Of course, that's just me speculating, I really don't know for sure...

I posted my map of gender differences on the 2012 Presidential Election forum under the subject line "Gender Wars".

Does social issues in the liberal side tend to lean towards females over males? As well as economic where females are probably more liberal(in the American sense) then males are.

I'm already posted that the ticket isn't as polarized agreement with anti-reagan. And I said my prediction on who win the female vote in the 2012 presidential election.

In a good GOP year, they will. Expect elections in the future to be a little less strictly North vs. South, Men vs. Women, or White vs. Nonwhite, especially as the Religious Right begins to die out. The GOP will eventually become the socially moderate, fiscally conservative (but not insane) party of the West, Midwest, and parts of the South and Northeast (I expect Alabama, South Carolina, and Mississippi to stay Republican), while the Democrats become the party of the working class and urban areas. I also expect fewer counties voting >80% for one party or the other. For instance, imagine what a Huntsman vs. Pryor election would look like.

The GOP can and has won the women's vote.  Perhaps the more interesting question would be what are the roots of the gender gap.  Even when they win the women's vote, the modern GOP has done worse among women then men.  Abortion rights certainly plays a role, but it would be too simplistic to say that was the main reason and leave it at that.

We could point to some historical events, such as the 1970's women's movement association with the Democratic Party and the Clarence Thomas hearings, as having played a role in the gender gap.  Perhaps that 70s activism was a catalyst for the gender gap's first appearance in 1980, just as the Thomas hearings turned 1992 into the "Year of the Woman."  The GOP has placed far fewer women in elected office than Democrats and I believe that also shapes perceptions of the party.  I do not think most women are fooled by the GOP putting a few high profile conservative women in front of a camera -- especially those that are clearly unqualified.

Probably not on a regular basis, but there's a good chance both sides will probably have one landslide election. Democrats will win the male vote and Republicans will win the female vote at some point soon.

They won the male vote in 2008. :P

Even though most women don't identify with feminism, they are still aware that some aspects of feminism do make their lives better, and most Democrats show how they realize that there are plenty of structural issues in our society that favor men.

I think the lack of a gender gap before 1980 (or a reverse one) had more to do with more women staying in their so-called "place", and being shielded from the positives of feminism. Working women have always been more liberal than working men, though of course there used to be a lot fewer of the former.


Or NH or ME would have voted more like CA, IL, or MD. You can't treat New England WF's as any more of an aberration than New England WM's!

One note, I would hesitate to draw too much conclusion from "ecological inference". That is a fallacy whereby the attributes of individual behavior are extrapolated from geographical aggregates.

Let me give an example. Suppose that in City A, the average income is $50,000, and City A votes 60% Democratic, whereas in City B, the average income is $40,000, and City B votes 60% Republican. You would conclude that the rich vote Democratic, whereas the poor vote Republican. You would also be wrong. As it turns out, 60% of the population of City A makes $30,000 and votes Democratic, and 40% makes $80,000 and votes Republican, averaging out to $50,000. In City B, 40% makes $25,000 and vote Democratic, and 60% make $50,000 and vote Republican, averaging out to $40,000. In both cities, the lower incomes vote Democratic and the upper incomes vote Republican, precisely the opposite result you would get from looking at geographical aggregates.

Instead of geographical aggregates, to correlate variables such as education and the gender gap you need to go to the individual behavioral level and get micro-level survey data directly from the people involved. Gallup has done that and found some relationship, at least under Obama:

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*FACEPALM*

And what you're saying isn't even true, as Reagan undoubtedly won the female vote already!

And I found out that by DarthNader post on here. My bad.

What makes men more into McCain where women into Obama?

I think it would be difficult, because the GOP already struggles with the women vote and it struggles with the black and hispanic votes.  The population is becoming more black and hispanic.  Therefore it is quite likely that the "new women" will not reverse the trend.

What was the gender voting breakdown pre-1980?  I couldn't find a good chart.


I mentioned this in my post on the 2012 Election board.  It is possible the New England WMs would vote more democratic rather than WFs voting more republican, but I thought it unlikely.  New England WMs voted only slightly more democratic than WMs in the rest of the country while WFs voting way more democratic than WFs in the rest of the country.  If we were talking about a huge gender gap in the south, I would expect the WMs to vote more democratic rather than southern WFs to vote more republican, because the WM vote was much further off from the national average.  Here is my stats from the other post:

I tried to incorporate education levels into explaining the difference, but could not find a satisfactory reason.  While the liberal west coast had virtually no gender difference, the liberal north east had a huge gender difference, despite those states having a similar level of college graduates and post-graduates.


Maybe my methodology is bad, but I don't see how education level can account for the difference between the west coast and the north east.

Those  quotes are from nclib, not me.

Sorry Ogre.  I think I've fixed it.

Was the women vote for the Republicans back then due to being the party of women rights and the Dems being the backwards party?

When in the world has the GOP ever supported women rights ?

Probably.
You have to remember that back in the late 1950's-early 1960's a lot of the Democratic party faithful were White Southern Males and Catholics.  Both groups that had quite the chauvinistic streak.  Meanwhile, the Republican Party at the time had been putting the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) on the party platform since the 1940's (at least).
So yeah, something to that effect.

This.

I don't think either party was really all that associated with women's rights prior to the 1970s, but from what I understand the Republican Party was a little more friendly to the cause.  Then in the 1970s there was a realignment and the feminist movement became a constituency of the Democratic Party. 

The Republicans Herbert Hoover and Dwight Eisenhower were the only presidential nominations prior to 1980 had the gender gap slide in which women voted for them greater then Al Smith or Adlai Stevenson. Then women voted slightly for Ronald Reagan over Jimmy Carter reelection bid in 1980. Females voted big against Walter Mondale in favor of president Ronald Reagan reelection run in 1984. They voted narrow for George Bush over Michael Dukakis in 1988. Since then, no Republican has ever won the vote of the females though Bush 43 almost beater Kerry in this group in 2004 when it was 51-48 for Kerry.


http://www.uic.edu/orgs/cwluherstory/jofreeman/polhistory/gendergap.htm

It is simply not true that differential voting between men and women was an "unremarked phenomenon" prior to 1980 (Sigel, 1999, 5). On the contrary a good deal of the political commentary on women in the Twentieth Century was devoted to real and speculative analyses about how women voted, or might vote.
The 8 % gender gap in 1980 was larger than any previously measured, but it was not the first. Prior to 1980 there were two presidential candidates for whom women voted at notably greater rates than did men: Herbert Hoover and Dwight Eisenhower.
The election of 1928 could well be called the "year of the woman voter." Throughout the 1920s, the mass of women had been relatively apathetic about politics, enthused by only a few local candidates and none of the national ones. But Hoover was so popular that he became known as "the woman's candidate." (McCormick 1928, 22; Smith 1929, 126; Barnard, 1928, 555). Some of his popularity derived from his role as Food Administrator during the Great War, and some from the importance of Prohibition in the election of 1928. Hoover was Dry, Smith was Wet, and it was commonly assumed that women wanted Prohibition to be enforced. Women registered to vote in record numbers, and the Republican Party's Women's Division was "besieged by unprecedented numbers of women who wanted to participate in the campaign." (Morrison 1978, 84). Hoover was endorsed by the National Woman's Party, the only major party Presidential candidate to be endorsed by a specifically feminist organization prior to 1984.
When the dust settled both private and public commentators were impressed with women's greatly increased turnout to vote, and with their strong support for Hoover. While scientific polling did not yet exist, straw polls recorded a gender gap. Robinson's review of these polls concluded that the Hearst poll was the most accurate; it had predicted that 60 percent of women and 56 percent of men would vote for Hoover. (Robinson 1932, 92). Private reports to the RNC and to FDR estimated larger differentials, some that women were ten percent more likely than men to vote for Hoover. Indeed these observations repeatedly emphasized the strong, conspicuous support of women for Hoover. Women were credited or blamed for the fact that Smith got a majority in only five Southern and one border state, and even lost New York, while the Democratic candidate for Governor, won. (Summary of reports in the FDR and Hoover Presidential libraries; Morrison 1978; Lichtman 1979, 163, 291-3; Harvey 1995, 253; NYT, Nov. 8, 1928, 9:2-3).
Attention to women faded in the election of 1932, dominated as it was by the Depression, and fewer observations were recorded. However, when Gallup surveyed expected voters in 1936, he asked those who had voted in 1932 to declare their choice. Of those who said they had voted, 63 % of the men were for FDR, but only 57 % of the women. Only 35 % of the men said they voted for Hoover, compared to 41 % of the women. (AIPO (Gallup) Poll #53)
This differential voting pattern faded to less than two percent in Presidential elections until 1952. Polls of voters done before and after that election found women were five percent more likely to vote for Eisenhower than were men, though both gave him a majority. Republican women gleefully claimed that women had elected him President (Priest 1953), and this belief soon became "firmly enshrined among American political lore." (Shelton 1955, D:1) Lou Harris' analysis of the Roper/NBC polls found a difference in male and female votes of 9% for those with high incomes, 6% for those with middle incomes, and 3% for those with low incomes, with women in all three groups more likely to vote for Ike. Harris attributed this to more women than men blaming the Democratic party for the Korean War, inflation, and corruption in Washington. (Harris 1954, 112-3, 116, 222). By 1956 the press was once again paying attention to the woman voter. The New York Times sent reporters into several states to find out why women favored Eisenhower. (NYT Oct. 1956: 9, 22:3; 14, 49:2; 22, 1:3, 20:3; 23, 1:3; 26, 16:1. Brown 1956; French 1956). In the 1956 election the gender gap increased to 6%, though more men as well as women voted for Eisenhower than in 1952.
The election of 1960 saw women once again fade from political sight. Some of this was due to the ongoing campaign of the DNC to downplay the idea that there was a woman's vote, and some was due to the rise of new issues. The gender gap dropped to between 2 and 3 % in 1960 -- too small to be statistically significant but implying that women still voted more frequently for the Republican candidate. The GOP women's division proudly declared that in the last three Presidential elections a majority of women voted for the Republican Party, and a majority of Republican votes came from women. (WD-RNC 1962) In 1964 as in 1960 the gender gap of 2 to 3 % was too small to be significant, but it was notable because, for the first time, women were more likely than men to vote for the Democratic Presidential candidate. In 1968 43 % of both men and women said they voted for Nixon. But men were 4 % more likely to vote for George Wallace (16% to 12%) while women were more likely to vote for Humphrey (45% to 41%). (Lynn 1979, 409) In the same polls, the traditional relationship between SES and party preference disappeared. High SES white women were three percent more likely to vote Democratic than low SES women. (Ladd and Hadley 1978, 240). In 1976 the gender gap was back to 5 %, but now women favored the Democratic candidate. (Lynn 1979, 409)
What's notable about this history is not merely that there was a gender gap prior to 1980, but that the pattern shifted. Previously the Republican Party had been the beneficiary of woman suffrage; subsequently the Democratic Party was. Furthermore, this change correlates with different attitudes by the national parties toward women and women's rights. While partisan differences were not large prior to 1980, they were present. Historically, it was the Republican Party that was the party of women's rights, and the Democratic Party that was the home of anti-feminism. After the new feminist movement rose in the 1960s-70s, the parties switched sides. (Freeman 1987)

Any comment about the article about historical female vote?

It fits with what I have heard.  I suspect the Democratic Party picking up the mantle of the civil rights movement in the 1960s may have precipitated the women's rights movement of the 1970s bringing their banner to the Democratic Party.  The cultural conservatives who opposed racial integration and began abandoning the Democratic Party over the issue were not likely to favor expanded rights for women either.  The feminists elected to Congress in the late 60s and 70s (mostly Democrats) waged high profile battles over the ERA, Title IX, reproductive rights, employment discrimination and other issues.  Many of these efforts were successful and women across America noticed.

Spot on and adding what you said in the post previous before this one.

Women vote Democratic because that is the party that supports the welfare-state that financially provides for Women in the absence of Men.

If Republicans continue to support Patriarchy (Family Values) women will continue to vote for Democrats.

Speeking of which, what about public school teachers since a majority of them are females? They have to contribute to the watt females vote Democratic. And I'm sure there are women who have family values but they live in strongly republican areas such as the south.

Says a redneck from Mississippi...

The GOP won women 49-48 in last year's house elections.

I don't see women being as GOP as men for the balance of my lifetime.

Weakens the impact of the statement, wouldn't you say?

nah, you ever seen a picture of Torie? looks in really good shape. could outlive the lot of us.

Women are victims of discrimination, so really, the GOP is not going to get the majority of their votes.

Women have voted for the GOP in landslides. If a GOP landslide happens in our lifetimes, count the women vote in with the male vote.

Women have, yes-in landslides. But notice the socioeconomic characters tics of people (including women) who vote Republican (in general).

You should read the historical vote of women from the article I posted onto this forum progressive realist.