The Gender Gap in Voting Democratic, 1972-2016: Intersections of Gender with Marital Status and Race

We examine the gender gap in voting Democratic or Republican in U.S. presidential elections from 1972 to 2016. The gap has gone up and down with no unidirectional trend. We find that the gap is smaller among married than never-married or divorced voters. We show that women voters are disproportionately Black, due to the serious underrepresentation of Black men among voters, especially among voters who have never married. The higher representation of Blacks among women than men voters, combined with the strong tendency of Blacks to vote Democratic, explains a large share (up to half in some elections) of the gender gap among the never-married. Contrary to expectations, socioeconomic disadvantage, including income, explains virtually none of the gender gap in voting; although single women are poorer than single men, and lower income predicts voting Democratic, these relationships are small enough that they do not combine to explain even a tiny share of the gender gap. Regarding ideology, while women hold more progressive attitudes than men on gender and social welfare, and these attitudes are predictive of voting Democratic, these relationships are not strong enough that ideology significantly mediates the effect of gender on voting. We used data from the General Social Survey, and show that our conclusions hold explaining the gender gap in party identification as well as in voting Democratic or Republican. Where possible, we undertook a parallel analysis of the American National Election Survey, finding that our key results replicate.