Why do women vote at higher rates than men? What would happen if turnout were equalized?

[ProgressiveModerate]

One fact that stunned me was that in the 2020 election, the GA electorate was like 56% female or something - possibly decisive in giving the state to Biden. In basically every state with a reliable 2020 exit poll that polled gender, it was higher % female. In 2022, many states got close to 60% female electorates (maybe cause of Dobbs?)

And looking at exit polls from recent elections, it seems like electorates range from about 50-60% female in most states, always a majority. Especially if the gender divide continues to grow (which I think it will), this seems like an underrated feature of elections that possibly works in Democrats favor.

Who are the men who don't vote? Do they lean left or right? Does either party have an opportunity to capitalize on this disparity? Will turnout equalize in future elections?

[WalterWhite]

It is probably because a lot of campaigns focus heavily on women's issues (abortion, gender pay gap, etc...). The fact that the electorate was about 60% female in some states in 2022, the year Roe v. Wade was overturned, confirms this for me.

Moreover, 60% of American women identify as feminists, as opposed to 40% of American men. Feminist causes (gender equality and LGBT rights) are hot-button issues as of now, which attracts feminists, who skew female.

TL;DR: Feminist issues (abortion and LGBT rights) attract more women to vote because more women are feminists than men.

[Skill and Chance]

Exit polls suggest every presidential electorate since 1984 has been majority female.  College towns and the Deep South are where this is most dramatic.  The latter has been nearly 60% female in most elections over the past 40 years (this IMO rules out the explanation of campaigns focusing on women's issues- these are the states with the strongest sense of gender roles and they have generally banned abortion today, even though nearly 60% of voters were women).  So our explanation for this has to be pretty Southern and youth-oriented to work.  Ideas:

1. The crime rate (and aggressiveness in prosecution) is generally higher in the South.  The prison population is like 80%+ male and men are much more likely to be convicted of serious crimes with longer sentences.  In almost every state, these men are excluded from voting for multiple years during their sentences.  Lifetime felon disenfranchisement is still the default in a few states, and it's the default for the most violent crimes in many more states. 

2. Women live longer than men, meaning they will be a significant majority of elderly people in many places and seniors vote the most consistently.  This is most pronounced among the working class and in the South and least pronounced among people who went to college and have desk jobs.  Like 80 or 90% of the violence in #1 is young men killing or seriously injuring other young men.  Throw in gun accidents and overdoses and this only increases the disparity.

3. Regarding the youngest voters, the paperwork associated with voting (registration, requesting and sending back VBM ballots while in college, etc.) feels a lot like another homework assignment to an 18-year-old.  Women have always performed better than men in school environments (even in the 19th century when there was little or no prospect of that schooling leading to a high income!) and I would imagine this is an extension of that.  They are also significantly more likely than men to be in college now and exposed to voter registration drives and political organizing associated with that.

[Torie]

I read that team Trump is making a major push to get low educated low turnout men to vote more. They are well aware of the stats.

[Tintrlvr]

Exit polls suggest every presidential electorate since 1984 has been majority female.  College towns and the Deep South are where this is most dramatic.  The latter has been nearly 60% female in most elections over the past 40 years (this IMO rules out the explanation of campaigns focusing on women's issues- these are the states with the strongest sense of gender roles and they have generally banned abortion today, even though nearly 60% of voters were women).  So our explanation for this has to be pretty Southern and youth-oriented to work.  Ideas:

1. The crime rate (and aggressiveness in prosecution) is generally higher in the South.  The prison population is like 80%+ male and men are much more likely to be convicted of serious crimes with longer sentences.  In almost every state, these men are excluded from voting for multiple years during their sentences.  Lifetime felon disenfranchisement is still the default in a few states, and it's the default for the most violent crimes in many more states. 

2. Women live longer than men, meaning they will be a significant majority of elderly people in many places and seniors vote the most consistently.  This is most pronounced among the working class and in the South and least pronounced among people who went to college and have desk jobs.  Like 80 or 90% of the violence in #1 is young men killing or seriously injuring other young men.  Throw in gun accidents and overdoses and this only increases the disparity.

3. Regarding the youngest voters, the paperwork associated with voting (registration, requesting and sending back VBM ballots while in college, etc.) feels a lot like another homework assignment to an 18-year-old.  Women have always performed better than men in school environments (even in the 19th century when there was little or no prospect of that schooling leading to a high income!) and I would imagine this is an extension of that.  They are also significantly more likely than men to be in college now and exposed to voter registration drives and political organizing associated with that.

This is absolutely right.

If you were active in the 2008 primary season, you might recall the confusion when exit polls showed Obama doing better among women than men in various Southern primaries, when Clinton typically did better than Obama among women everywhere else. The reason was that black men, in particularly, had exceptionally poor turnout and were often ineligible in the Deep South such that Deep South Democratic primaries can get close to two-thirds women, but white men and white women had similar voting rates and so voting women were much less white/more black than voting men, vastly outdoing any advantage Clinton had among women relative to men within racial subgroups.

[The Mikado]

Worth pointing out there's a heavy education college/noncollege gap in voting (College graduates are about 32% of adults but about 41% of voting adults). We're about 30 years into persistently higher rates of women going to college than men, and it's true over and over to an almost hilarious extent. Pick a college and look up its gender breakdown and it's probably like 58-42 or 60-40 women over men. if higher education leads to higher voting rates and women are systematically higher educated than men for every cohort under about the age of 45-50 years old, that'll tell in the voting patterns.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Women live longer than men. The older the age group, the larger that the female-to-male ratio is. Since the elderly have high turnout rates, this matters a lot. This will explain a substantial fraction of the turnout gap. If you take into account the fact that very few women are felons or in prison but plenty of men are felons or in prison, this explains another chunk of the turnout gap, especially in a state like Georgia. Of course, even if you adjusted for these factors, women would compose a larger chunk of voters than men but my guess is that there wouldn't be a huge difference without these two factors.

[Torie]

I think perhaps men should be disenfranchised for a decade, to work on their issues. If you quote me, I will deny it (a sinister force hypnotized me composed this text and  post it as a captive mere conduit).

[Tekken_Guy]

I read that team Trump is making a major push to get low educated low turnout men to vote more. They are well aware of the stats.

Where have you heard that?

[Torie]

I read that team Trump is making a major push to get low educated low turnout men to vote more. They are well aware of the stats.

Where have you heard that?

I don't recall now. I read it, not heard it - somewhere. It makes total sense however. That's the most loyal base of all. Trump himself has said he loves uneducated people, not as a Christian or something, but because that is his food source as it were.

[ProgressiveModerate]

I read that team Trump is making a major push to get low educated low turnout men to vote more. They are well aware of the stats.

Where have you heard that?

I don't recall now. I read it, not heard it - somewhere. It makes total sense however. That's the most loyal base of all. Trump himself has said he loves uneducated people, not as a Christian or something, but because that is his food source as it were.

The thing I worry about is starting in the 2024 cycle, Republicans becoming an explicitly "pro-men party" and Democrats dig their heels deeper to feminism and MeeToo as a pushback. Too large of a political gender divide spells really bad news for society.

In theory one good thing about a larger gender divide though is things should become a bit less geographically polarized in theory, since men and women are more or less close to evenly distributed across the country.

[Agafin]

Exit polls suggest every presidential electorate since 1984 has been majority female.  College towns and the Deep South are where this is most dramatic.  The latter has been nearly 60% female in most elections over the past 40 years (this IMO rules out the explanation of campaigns focusing on women's issues- these are the states with the strongest sense of gender roles and they have generally banned abortion today, even though nearly 60% of voters were women).  So our explanation for this has to be pretty Southern and youth-oriented to work.  Ideas:

1. The crime rate (and aggressiveness in prosecution) is generally higher in the South.  The prison population is like 80%+ male and men are much more likely to be convicted of serious crimes with longer sentences.  In almost every state, these men are excluded from voting for multiple years during their sentences.  Lifetime felon disenfranchisement is still the default in a few states, and it's the default for the most violent crimes in many more states. 

2. Women live longer than men, meaning they will be a significant majority of elderly people in many places and seniors vote the most consistently.  This is most pronounced among the working class and in the South and least pronounced among people who went to college and have desk jobs.  Like 80 or 90% of the violence in #1 is young men killing or seriously injuring other young men.  Throw in gun accidents and overdoses and this only increases the disparity.

3. Regarding the youngest voters, the paperwork associated with voting (registration, requesting and sending back VBM ballots while in college, etc.) feels a lot like another homework assignment to an 18-year-old.  Women have always performed better than men in school environments (even in the 19th century when there was little or no prospect of that schooling leading to a high income!) and I would imagine this is an extension of that.  They are also significantly more likely than men to be in college now and exposed to voter registration drives and political organizing associated with that.

This is pretty much it. Point #1 is especially important in the South, and in particular, southern blacks and that's due to their felon disenfranchisement rules as you said. I believe the share of white voters who are women in a given state rarely exceeds 52-53% whereas among black voters, it can easily run into the low 60% and is pretty much never lower than the high 50% range

[Skill and Chance]

Exit polls suggest every presidential electorate since 1984 has been majority female.  College towns and the Deep South are where this is most dramatic.  The latter has been nearly 60% female in most elections over the past 40 years (this IMO rules out the explanation of campaigns focusing on women's issues- these are the states with the strongest sense of gender roles and they have generally banned abortion today, even though nearly 60% of voters were women).  So our explanation for this has to be pretty Southern and youth-oriented to work.  Ideas:

1. The crime rate (and aggressiveness in prosecution) is generally higher in the South.  The prison population is like 80%+ male and men are much more likely to be convicted of serious crimes with longer sentences.  In almost every state, these men are excluded from voting for multiple years during their sentences.  Lifetime felon disenfranchisement is still the default in a few states, and it's the default for the most violent crimes in many more states. 

2. Women live longer than men, meaning they will be a significant majority of elderly people in many places and seniors vote the most consistently.  This is most pronounced among the working class and in the South and least pronounced among people who went to college and have desk jobs.  Like 80 or 90% of the violence in #1 is young men killing or seriously injuring other young men.  Throw in gun accidents and overdoses and this only increases the disparity.

3. Regarding the youngest voters, the paperwork associated with voting (registration, requesting and sending back VBM ballots while in college, etc.) feels a lot like another homework assignment to an 18-year-old.  Women have always performed better than men in school environments (even in the 19th century when there was little or no prospect of that schooling leading to a high income!) and I would imagine this is an extension of that.  They are also significantly more likely than men to be in college now and exposed to voter registration drives and political organizing associated with that.

This is pretty much it. Point #1 is especially important in the South, and in particular, southern blacks and that's due to their felon disenfranchisement rules as you said. I believe the share of white voters who are women in a given state rarely exceeds 52-53% whereas among black voters, it can easily run into the low 60% and is pretty much never lower than the high 50% range

I think it gets a lot higher than this in places like former factory towns and Appalachia because of the life expectancy issue.

[Vosem]

I read that team Trump is making a major push to get low educated low turnout men to vote more. They are well aware of the stats.

Where have you heard that?

I don't recall now. I read it, not heard it - somewhere. It makes total sense however. That's the most loyal base of all. Trump himself has said he loves uneducated people, not as a Christian or something, but because that is his food source as it were.

The thing I worry about is starting in the 2024 cycle, Republicans becoming an explicitly "pro-men party" and Democrats dig their heels deeper to feminism and MeeToo as a pushback. Too large of a political gender divide spells really bad news for society.

In theory one good thing about a larger gender divide though is things should become a bit less geographically polarized in theory, since men and women are more or less close to evenly distributed across the country.

Interestingly, I think this is unlikely as long as the pro-life movement continues to exert some influence over the GOP, just because in its leadership and outreach efforts it tends to be very female.

The points about higher life expectancy and higher educational attainment are well taken, but they do poorly at explaining that high female turnout is uniquely clustered among the youngest voters and among black people. I think it might be that young men and black men are sort of uniquely alienated from the political system, and also that there is a persistent level of Democratic outreach to young, or black, women, which is unusually successful and not really paralleled by any kind of thing on the Republican side.

(Note that it's really unclear which party higher turnout advantages, but Democrats still try to raise turnout all the time, while Republicans don't think of this as an important variable and basically just shrug if you tell them their policies will lower turnout. There is a deep level at which many Republicans tend to think communal, non-individualized participation in politics is bad; if someone wouldn't vote absent a sustained effort to get them to the polls, their vote is in some way less valid. This is behind a lot of the "Trump won in 2020" stuff, incidentally -- that a fair election without efforts to raise turnout would've resulted in a Trump victory*. The ideal voter is someone who has self-radicalized because of exposure to conservative media, and would vote no matter what.)

*Actually very questionable, because to both parties' consternation turnout levels are not really correlated with election results in any consistent way.

[The Mikado]

*Actually very questionable, because to both parties' consternation turnout levels are not really correlated with election results in any consistent way.

Pew has some thoughts on this.

[Vosem]

*Actually very questionable, because to both parties' consternation turnout levels are not really correlated with election results in any consistent way.

Pew has some thoughts on this.

I mean over a longer term than 3 cycles. 1996 was a very low-turnout election and 2008 very high-turnout, but they had similar outcomes (D+8 and D+7). 2006 was a pretty low-turnout midterm, and 2018 very high-turnout, but they also had similar outcomes (both D+8). 2010 was a fairly high-turnout midterm for its time -- highest since 1994 -- while 2014 was very low-turnout, but they also returned similar outcomes (R+7 and R+5). 2020 was the highest-turnout election of the past decade, while 2012 was the lowest-turnout, but they had similar outcomes (D+4).

At the state level, there are a few stricter rules in heavily-Hispanic states (where it tends to be true that low turnout is good for the GOP and higher turnout is good for Democrats), but nationally, this tends to be swamped by other patterns. There isn't a consistent effect where higher or lower turnout is good for either party.

[ProgressiveModerate]

*Actually very questionable, because to both parties' consternation turnout levels are not really correlated with election results in any consistent way.

Pew has some thoughts on this.

I mean over a longer term than 3 cycles. 1996 was a very low-turnout election and 2008 very high-turnout, but they had similar outcomes (D+8 and D+7). 2006 was a pretty low-turnout midterm, and 2018 very high-turnout, but they also had similar outcomes (both D+8). 2010 was a fairly high-turnout midterm for its time -- highest since 1994 -- while 2014 was very low-turnout, but they also returned similar outcomes (R+7 and R+5). 2020 was the highest-turnout election of the past decade, while 2012 was the lowest-turnout, but they had similar outcomes (D+4).

At the state level, there are a few stricter rules in heavily-Hispanic states (where it tends to be true that low turnout is good for the GOP and higher turnout is good for Democrats), but nationally, this tends to be swamped by other patterns. There isn't a consistent effect where higher or lower turnout is good for either party.

Increased turnout is never absolute in who it favors because it depends upon where that extra turn out is coming from.

In many "sunbelt" states like AZ, TX, and GA, higher turnout typically favors Dems because the communities they're dependent on have disproportionately lower turnout, but theoretically, if the white vote had super-charged turnout, turnout would increase and states would shift right; it's just that there's fewer non-voting whites for the GOP to potentially gain than non-voting blacks and hispanics.

In the northern states where you have large pockets of high tunout white liberals, like Seattle, turnout becomes more complex.

[It’s so Joever]

If they were equalized Dems would be massacred to put it simply.

[Former President tack50]

Probably doesn't explain the entire gap (and may note even explain a significant amount of it), but I will note that women live longer than men and therefore, the average woman is older than the average man.

And we all know older people tend to vote more, the reasons behind that are well studied.

[Former President tack50]

I read that team Trump is making a major push to get low educated low turnout men to vote more. They are well aware of the stats.

Where have you heard that?

I don't recall now. I read it, not heard it - somewhere. It makes total sense however. That's the most loyal base of all. Trump himself has said he loves uneducated people, not as a Christian or something, but because that is his food source as it were.

The thing I worry about is starting in the 2024 cycle, Republicans becoming an explicitly "pro-men party" and Democrats dig their heels deeper to feminism and MeeToo as a pushback. Too large of a political gender divide spells really bad news for society.

In theory one good thing about a larger gender divide though is things should become a bit less geographically polarized in theory, since men and women are more or less close to evenly distributed across the country.

Are they? For my masters degree I had to look at a variety of demographic indicators and one of the clearest ones was that urban and metropolitan areas skew female while rural areas skew male. The explanation I was not quite able to grasp but it seems a mix of women reaching higher amounts of education, which they use to move to major cities; the "equal but opposite" effect of men falling behind more often as well as most of the job opportunities in rural areas (often related to farming or livestock) tending to prefer men?

Admittedly that was only for Spain (and not even the entire country, just a subset of 35 municipalities; though the trend applies nationwide). I know even right next door in Portugal the trend doesn't exist, so it may not apply in the US.

[Torie]

*Actually very questionable, because to both parties' consternation turnout levels are not really correlated with election results in any consistent way.

Pew has some thoughts on this.

Here is a Pew update for 2022. A bunch of Dem women in particular did not show up to vote who had in 2020. Ditto for Dem Hispanics. Almost nobody flipped. Swing voters are just not a thing anymore. I suspect that surprises no one.

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/07/12/republican-gains-in-2022-midterms-driven-mostly-by-turnout-advantage/

[ProgressiveModerate]

I read that team Trump is making a major push to get low educated low turnout men to vote more. They are well aware of the stats.

Where have you heard that?

I don't recall now. I read it, not heard it - somewhere. It makes total sense however. That's the most loyal base of all. Trump himself has said he loves uneducated people, not as a Christian or something, but because that is his food source as it were.

The thing I worry about is starting in the 2024 cycle, Republicans becoming an explicitly "pro-men party" and Democrats dig their heels deeper to feminism and MeeToo as a pushback. Too large of a political gender divide spells really bad news for society.

In theory one good thing about a larger gender divide though is things should become a bit less geographically polarized in theory, since men and women are more or less close to evenly distributed across the country.

Are they? For my masters degree I had to look at a variety of demographic indicators and one of the clearest ones was that urban and metropolitan areas skew female while rural areas skew male. The explanation I was not quite able to grasp but it seems a mix of women reaching higher amounts of education, which they use to move to major cities; the "equal but opposite" effect of men falling behind more often as well as most of the job opportunities in rural areas (often related to farming or livestock) tending to prefer men?

Admittedly that was only for Spain (and not even the entire country, just a subset of 35 municipalities; though the trend applies nationwide). I know even right next door in Portugal the trend doesn't exist, so it may not apply in the US.

Ye there are definitely skews, but in America outside some military bases and a few very specific farm/manufacturing communities, it mostly stays within 55-45 either way according to the census data we have.

One general trend that is interesting is the west tends to skew more male while the east skews more female, urban-rural aside.

[darklordoftech]

The thing I worry about is starting in the 2024 cycle, Republicans becoming an explicitly "pro-men party" and Democrats dig their heels deeper to feminism and MeeToo as a pushback.

People were saying that in 2016, but then the Religious Right re-asserted itself, alienating the horny men who the GOP made inroads with in 2016.

[Ferguson97]

Women are smarter than men.