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2014: 'Gender Gap' Is Still a Myth

2014: 'Gender Gap' Is Still a Myth

As exit polling again made clear in the 2014 midterm elections, there is no real “gender gap” in Americans’ voting. Many candidates experienced shock when votes were counted, as they had centered their campaigns around the belief that there is.

In these elections, entire Democratic campaigns went into battle against an alleged Republican “War on Women.” Debating issues that have long been settled, especially contraception, and resurrecting old canards, including “gender pay equity,” Democrats were armed for a discussion that bored the American public. 

While there is some variance in how men and women vote, the differences are much smaller than Democrats and many in the media seem to believe. Rather than gender, the main determinants in voting are marital status and race. 

Nationally, women preferred Democrats over Republicans by a slim 4 points, according to exit polling. Men preferred Republicans by a whopping 16 points, a huge 20-point difference. White women, however, voted for Republicans by a 14 point margin. Republicans received 56% of the votes of white women, while Democrats won 42%. 

The overall female vote is skewed, though, by the nearly monolithic support Democrats receive from black women. This group gives 91% of its vote to Democrats and just 8% to Republicans. This is 10 points more Democratic than black men. Latino women support Democrats by more than a 2-1 margin, while 41% of Latino men vote for Republicans. 

Married women, of all races, prefer Republicans. Married women voted for Republicans over Democrats by a 10 point margin, 54-44%. Not only do unmarried women vote overwhelmingly Democrat, but unmarried men prefer Democrats by a 1-point margin, 49-48%. Married men are pro-Republican, and unmarried women are pro-Democrat. In this election, many more married men voted than did single women. 

Worse for Democrats, while single women made up a similar share of the electorate as in 2012, their vote shifted by 7 points to Republicans. Even the wall-to-wall campaigning on so-called women’s issues didn’t keep this Obama base from shifting slightly more towards Republicans. 

Late in the campaign, the liberal Denver Post scolded incumbent Dem. Sen. Mark Udall for focusing too much of his campaign on “war on women” issues. In hindsight, perhaps it wasn’t so much a scolding as a plea for Sen. Udall to help his own campaign. Just days before the election, even a Democrat donor heckled Udall to talk about other issues. 

No doubt, Udall, like many other losing candidates, felt strongly about these issues. Just as they buy into the myth that there is inequality in pay between men and women, they fervently believe in a large voting gender gap that just isn’t so. 

Perhaps married women are from Mars and single women from Venus. 


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