Gender Gap Overdone, Group Says Voting Spreads Much Wider Between Other Interest Groups

The importance of the gender gap between men and women voters is being overplayed and that can be patronizing to women voters, critics believe.

“American women constitute more than half of the voting electorate,” said Jody Newman, executive director of the National Women’s Political Caucus in Washington. “Their impact at the polls makes it important to analyze them in terms of their individual circumstances, as opposed to some monolithic bloc.”

In a analysis released Thursday, Newman’s group assessed exit polls for national elections in 1990, 1992 and 1994 as well as U.S. Census Bureau surveys since 1964.

In 1994, 57 percent of Democratic votes came from women, while only 46 percent of Republican voters were women. In other words, the gender gap was 11 percentage points.

But the report showed that there were wider spreads between many other interest groups than between men and women. For instance:

The marriage gap between married and single people was 12.5 points.

The geography gap between urban and rural voters was 28.9 points.

The religion gap between Protestants and Jews was 37.6 points.

The income gap between rich and poor voters was 19.4 points.

“These other gaps are much more telling than the gap between men and women,” Newman said. “We’re becoming a much more divided electorate, and we need to be focusing on those more specific reasons.”

Evelyn McPhail, co-chair of the Republican National Committee, agrees, saying the so-called gender voting gap has been little more than a Democratic Party tactic to label itself the party of women voters.

“They’ve preyed on women, using this issue of differences as a way to make themselves seem like the group that cares about women,” she said in a telephone interview. “But in 1994, more Republican women were elected than ever before. That shows that the issues women care about cut across party lines.”

For example, 52.5 percent of George Bush’s votes in 1992 came from women, while 55 percent of President Clinton’s voters were female, the Women’s Political Caucus report states.

But Democratic pollster Celinda Lake, who has closely studied the gender gap, thinks it can’t be dismissed.

“There’s no getting away from the fact that men and women have different opinions about the issues,” she said. For example, recent polling shows that by a 20 percentage point margin, women think congressional welfare reform initiatives have gone too far.

“These sort of cleavages are especially volatile, particularly because both parties are in a uniquely competitive position,” Lake said. “They can’t be denied because they often determine the outcome of a race.”

Newman agrees - just as long as talk of gaps doesn’t undermine women’s political autonomy.

“Women voters will be crucial in 1996,” she said. “Nobody can win without the votes of women, and politicians need to understand that they can’t think they have a woman’s vote all sewed up.”

Observers have closely scrutinized the split between the way men and women vote for different parties since 1980, when a marked split between voters for Ronald Reagan occurred. Since then, terms like “chasm” or “wide gulf” have been used to describe the difference between men and women voters, Newman said.

In recent years, women voters have been characterized as being more likely to vote for bigger government and more social spending, Newman said, as opposed to the “Angry White Men” of November 1994, who sent a loud and clear message against bureaucracy.

But women voters are not lock step in their voting patterns, Newman noted, and don’t form a voting bloc as do blacks (who historically vote 85-90 percent Democratic) or Jews (who vote 75-80 percent Democratic).

Newman said it’s important to temper the rhetoric about differences between men and women voters because it misses a very different point.

“It fosters a sentiment that all women want one thing and all men want another, or that all women vote Democrat and all men vote Republican,” Newman said. “It’s an easy way to recognize differences in society, but women are actually very diverse in their choice of issues.”

The National Women’s Political Caucus is a bipartisan grass-roots group that recruits, trains and supports women candidates for elected office.