Transcripts For CSPAN3 Women Voters1920-2016 20240713

Wolbrecht,ristina this evening. Before i begin, i want you to take note of the emergency exit located at the front and rear of the room. And if you will take a moment to silence your cell phone so we do not disrupt this fascinating talk. While you doing that, i would ive to share an installation recently curated on our north wall. We take a look at how these Suffrage Movement contributed to redesignings womens roles from various perspectives as they provide for a quality. We have a large exhibition across the way required a colonialimagining library. It shows a rarely seen set of historical treasures in community boston. You are asked to consider which books should be considered required reading today. There are fascinating choices and there is a place for you to share your own ideas as well. The gallery admission to suffrage and required reading exhibition are one of the many benefits of membership to the at the nail and we are grateful to all of our members for it. How many of you are members and how many are visitors . Yay. Welcome back to all or members and welcome to our visitors. We are glad you are here. Youre welcome to tour the gallery, pick up the newsletter. You can join the athenaeum as a member. If youre thinking about it, we also have dave passes available now. Come in, check it out, spend some time and we hope to see you back again. Now. Cht. Stina wolbre she is a professor of political c. Rubbernd the handley program at the university of notre dame. In addition to the book she will discuss tonight, she is the author and coauthor of counting womens ballots and the politics of women, as well as myriad articles on women as political role models. In representation of Women Education policy. How have women voted in the first 100 years since the ratification of the 19th amendment . In a century of votes for women, offers anr unprecedented account of women voters in american politics over the last 10 decades. Please join me in offering an exceptionally warm welcome to christina wolbrecht. [applause] thank you so much. It is such an honor and a thrill to be here. This is literally what i thought academia was going to be like all the time. This is not what my office looks like, but in my dreams this is what my office looks like. This is actually the release day for a century of votes for women [applause] wolbrecht and im really excited to be here talking to you today. It has been 100 years since the 19th amendment prohibited the denial of Voting Rights on the basis of sex. Since that time, the question on everyones mind, journalists, voters themselves, definitely politicians what would women voters do . What should we expect from women voters . What we see when we look over this 100 years are lots and lots of ideas about what women are going to do. How they will be impactful. What might impact their voting behavior. So the headlines from here, the petticoat one is from 1988. Town to the 16 ways of looking at a female voter from 2008 and women may decide the election, which is from 2016. I do promise you we will start in the 1920s and we will get to 2016 and maybe 2020 by the end. Use at i want to do is couple examples of conventional wisdom about women voters over time that has shaped our thinking about women and their impact on politics in the United States. One of the things i hope you will take away from this lecture what weink about how believe about women voters is in some ways as important as what women voters actually do. If we think of women voters and politicians think of women voters as soccer moms white women who live in the suburbs and drive minivans, they will craft their appeals, they will design Public Policy to appeal to what they have in mind as a woman voter. That white married women in the suburbs are not actually a very large proportion of the electorate. They become less so over time. We know aboutnk women voters and what do we actually know . I will start with the very first the twitter hot takes a about women in the 1920s. The very first conventional wisdom about women voters was this idea that women suffrage had been a failure. These are headlines from 1923 and 1924. This might be the only talk you see this year where one of the headlines is from Good Housekeeping as well as the harpers post, magazine, etc. This was something scholars tended to believe as well. For reasons i can talk more about, we actually have very, about womendata voters immediately after suffrage. As you are probably aware, citizens do not placed pink and blue ballots into ballot boxes, and so from the official voting record, we dont have a way to know how many women voted. There is one exception to that, illinois. Because of the unusual way they in franchise women they did count womens ballots differently in 1920. What that means is virtually everything we know comes from one state and two elections. Before George Gallup and everyone else will invent survey research. In popular also histories. The American Woman loses suffrage in 1920. She seemed to be very little interested in it once she had it. I think i just skipped no, i didnt. Know . At do we actually in some ways we can kind of us excuse observers in the 1920s. They did not have much to go on. They were interviewing Party Leaders in trying to understand. What this graph is going to show , the turnout rates of men are in gold and women in purple. In the firste, elections after women won the right to vote, theres quite a gap. Thirtysomething points. Vote. Men turning out to and about a third of women in that first election after the 19th amendment are turning out to vote. In some sense, it looks like this story. Ists to the story gets more complicated if we look at different groups of women. That will be another theme of my talk. The talk about the woman voter makes almost no sense in american politics. Here, you want to talk about women where they live. Speak g to try and virginia is at the end. Massachusetts is next. Connecticut, oklahoma, minnesota, illinois, iowa, missouri, kentucky. There is a huge variation, depending on where you live on what womens turnout looks like in 1920. In some places, womens turnout is incredibly low. Fewer than 10 turned out to vote in 1920. Only a little higher in massachusetts and connecticut. On the other hand, there are other places where the turnout of women was quite impressive. More than half of women took advantage of the right to vote when they were first able to do so. So the question is, what is different about missouri and kentucky compared to massachusetts, virginia, connecticut . You see we have similar patterns among men. You see here on my right. Then on my left. One of the things this data reminds me of is in the United States, we have the right to vote, but the obligation rests almost entirely on the individual. Youve got to register yourself. Youve got to get to the polling place. , maybe in some places, we will talk about, pay a poll tax. That means different groups capacity to overcome barriers are going to explain a lot about how much people vote. What makes these different places different . Massachusetts, and connecticut had a large number of electoral laws. They had poll taxes or literacy tests. They have long registration periods. Its worth saying i dont have any of those states up here, in four Southern States women did not vote in the president ial election of 1920. They had sixmonth registration periods. Said, weretates sorry. Its nice you have been andhise, but you franchised, but you missed the registration deadline. Other states, including massachusetts had similar restrictions but found ways to let women vote. If you look at the boston almanac, the report from the electoral office, you can tell they were a Little Boston the report from the electoral office, you can tell they were little put out. You have to hold all of these special days just for women to come and vote, so there is this was muchggressive, it work, but we managed to register all of these women to vote. Haveow the places that more electoral restrictions are going to have lower turnout and thats the very points of most of these restrictions. A pollinia, things like tax and a literacy test are meant to exclude africanAmerican Voters. I would love to tell you more about how some africanamerican women in virginia got around that. But of course, most did not. Also to exclude poor whites. And there will be particularly strong effect on women rather than men. If you are going to pale pay a poll tax and cant afford to, you probably will pay it for the male head of the household are not for the woman. In massachusetts in 1920, 60 of the population was first or Second Generation immigrant. The purpose of those laws for were for those already in power to keep immigrants away from polls and not have as big an impact on voting. Missouri and kentucky had very few registration requirements. The other thing that makes these groups of states different is the level of competition. This was a time when most american states were overwhelmingly blue or overwhelmingly red. This is the solid democratic south. Theres not even republicans or nominated for office, right . On the other hand, massachusetts and connecticut are overwhelmingly red. Heldhelmingly republican during this time. These 10 states, the only two that would be classified competitive our missouri in kentucky. In president ial election 1920 was decided by. 05 of the vote. What happens when votes are competitive. The party has an incentive to reach out for every single vote. The norms about women not voting seem to be worse. The norms are larger for women than men. This is showing women on the left, men on the right. The goal is to get places the red the gold is places with a lot of barriers. If you live in a place with a lot of laws, you not see much turn off turnout. These are brandnew voters trying to learn the ropes. Things that discouraged voting were even more likely to discourage womens voting. Here, purple is democratic, oneparty places, so the south. Republican places, the north and the west and the few competitive examples we have. Forn, the same pattern women. Other stop and make one point. The patterns are still the same. It turns out men and women are reasonable human beings who pay some attention to politics and have views on this sort of thing. Given the generations to the resistance of womens suffrage this is a population that was was atly capable least as capable as men were at participating in elections. What this means is the difference between the turnout, the average turnout of a woman woman inky and a virginia is 50 points. If you want to understand turnout its better to know where someone lived then whether she, they were a man or a woman. The overall gap is just 32 points, but the gap between different kinds of women. Women in the south and in the competitive border states is much larger. That is a theme you will here tonight. There are lots of differences between women that dramatically outpaced any differences between women and men in general. As we talked to the future at the end of this talk. In 1980, women have been more likely to turnout in president ial elections than men. That difference has grown over time, but it is fairly set study. Women have been more likely to turn out to vote since 1980. Say abouthas more to women voters. He goes on to say, not only was she very little interested in voting when she could, but she voted mostly as the unregenerate men about her did. Allen mean about this . Another popular convention that neck and 50s, men telling women how to vote. This is a headline from the boston globe, from the 1920s. The second headline is from the detroit pre the detroit the 1950s. In in a sense what people were trying to do was make sense of the fact that women got the right to vote and voting patterns looked so similar. But we thought women were so different. What could possibly be the menon and the reason was were telling their wives how to vote. I will tell you will secret. My husband and i also vote the same way in president ial elections and i will let you come to your own assumptions about the direction of influence their. There. [laughter] this assumption has consequences. George gallup and others become the first folks doing sophisticated polling in the United States where they are randomly selecting people, using good methods and finally have this opportunity in a systematic better understand the attitudes, thoughts, and behaviors of people in lots of ways, what kind of cereal they buy but also what kind of candidates they support. The first data we have, george understand. Sely they thought that women would do what their husbands told them the night before. They really have to focus on men in see their thought process their understanding. The data is not great. If you want to understand anything about women during this period. Role inut to violate a put a lot of words on a powerpoint slide. You dont have to read them all. Names writtenl be on your heart if you went to graduate school in Political Science. These are the very first systematic scholarly studies done of voters in the United States. The first book is called voting out of columbia university. The second quote is from the famous book the American Voter and the last is a quote from a book chapter that really forms the foundation of virtually all studies of Public Opinion in the 19 in the United States. I bring this up because graduate students and scholars of american politics still read these books. They have shaped they are very well done in almost every way our understanding of American Voters and what we teach to undergraduates in the outthat our scholarships go for generations. Many of these people invented, literally, the first scholarly surveys. Studieslong election done every year since 1948, president ial election studies. What are these scholars thinking about american elections. What did they decide about American Voters . They decided what the newspaper doings well, women are mostly what their husbands are telling them to do. They also observed that many women are not that different in their political views and these are the conclusions they come to. In the second 1 the wife who votes, but otherwise pays little tends to to politics leave not only the sifting information to her husband, but the decision as well. These are scholars. These are people bringing evidence to bear. So, lets look at some of that evidence. I am focusing on the top quote and what i want to say about empiricalit makes for points, for claims of fact we can evaluate. First, husbands tell their wives how to vote. Not particularly respect them. On the side of women, there is trust. There is thef men desire to guide. So, what you will see is whether a woman or a man said she would go to a Family Member to discuss of political question in june and whether or not a woman or said they discussed politics with Family Members in october. One thing they are trying to show, not surprisingly is people an election in the summer. The fall before an election than in the summer. Have you talked about politics with anyone recently. It was the last person you discussed the election or candidates with . It is absolutely suggested by this data, which i have every reason to trust, women are more likely to talk to Family Members than other people. Whether that means they are more likely to take directions from their husbands the question is not even about husbands. Its about Family Members, is not something they directly observed or ask about. Did women take direction from their husbands . Maybe. Probably some of them did. I just dont know very well from this particular data, ok . Its worth saying that one principle of social science would be just how likely are you to talk to anyone . Since this was a time when many women did not work outside the certainly the last person you talked to is more likely to be a Family Member. I cannot say that women did not take direction from their husbands, but the empirical evidence of that is not strong. But there are three more empirical claims being made about women and trust and men and respect for wives. There are no questions asked about that in these surveys at all. This ishappening, and something we all do every day people are looking at facts and saying, what explains those facts . Theill be routed in the way world works. Women are not inherently very interested in politics, the traditional family structure, that the man is the leader of the family, they look at this information and say, obviously, this is what is going to happen and i want to be clear. We still do this today. We need to always be thinking about the biases and the assumptions we bring to evaluating political information , any kind of information whatsoever. Im guessing you cannot read this. This is a rider in the new york times. Couples tendrried to vote the same way, and they do, it is because they have representation. Social science called this a hypothesis. A hypothesis. Married couples tend to have shared characteristics that are associated with how they vote in president ial and other elections. Everyone is excited. Its very easy to take on the past. But then they did not know there were gender norms. We have had such dramatic changes. And we have. Its dramatic the change in womens lived experiences. When you get to 2016, shirley we will have so much more data. We will really understand what is going to happen. I went to 2016 thinking, this is my year. We are going to have a woman nominee. I am ready. I trained for this. Woman nominee turns out to be this tense, historic thing happening in the 2016 election. On the one side, with the first woman nominee of a major party. On the other side we have this unusual nominee does rain usual i mean no military or political experience, etc. , etc. I will not repeat to you the things he is accused of doing. So obviously, obviously we will have a giant gender gap in 2016. On the top and the popular voting website 5 38 the bottom. Of course women will vote for hillary clinton. Of course women are going to vote against donald trump gender is the thing that most explains womens voting behavior. Right . If we think that, then surely women are going to vote for a woman nominee and against. Resident trump let me fly what this is. This is the gender gap. This is basically the difference in the percentage of women voting democratic versus men. When the lineis, is below zero, women are slightly more republican than were men. That is what we see prior to the 1960s. I love this particularly because when we do all of the media stuff theres all of the stories about women fainting over john kennedy and more of them actually voted for richard nixon. Its really not until 19 a. D. , which is the second side of the book i can talk about, that we , what wet a systematic call the modern gender gap, as opposed to the traditional one, in which women on average are more likely to vote for democratic candidates. The largest of there, 1996, the lection of the clinton bill clinton. But whats went to happen in 2016 . Shirley this race will give us the biggest gender gap we have ever seen. I want you to prepare yourselves, because here comes. I dont know if you missed that. [laughter] there it is. Ht and one of the ways i am going to dispute my own claim in two seconds. What i say to students, for the most unusual president ial election, certainly modern times, when people showed up on election day the patterns were pretty consistent, including the fact that 90 of women who attend a fight as republicans voted for the republican nominee and 90 of women who identified as democrat voted for the democratic candidate. Pretty much the same percentage as did men in both of those camps as well. Now you may have caught on to this idea that women are not the same in the fall of 2016, so theres a lot of attention that a majority of white women voted 2016. Nald trump in and the question becomes, how . Why . How can we possibly understand this . What im showing you now is the percentage of white women who voted for the republican nominee since 1952. They will be in gold. And the percentage of africanamerican women who voted for the republican nominee in purple. What you will see is there has really only been two instances ance the 1950s in which majority of white women have voted for the democratic in 1964, whichne you can see, everybody voted against barry goldwater, and again in 1996, we saw this really large gender gap. If you have really good eyes you are noticing 1992 looks like that, too. We add in the fact that ross perot got 19 of the vote. None of the candidates got a majority from white women. Im going to focus on just these two. And what we see is this cavern of whitete preferences women and African American women. So this is latina women. We have not had that data as long. I would also argue we have been really focused on the blackwhite racial gap in this really interesting stuff happening in this growing part of the population that is latina that i think is going to be very important Going Forward. What im showing you year is in 2016, men are in gold, women are in purple. Africanamericans the percent in 2012 voting for the republican candidate extremely low level africanamerican support for mitt romney in 2012, and we see gender gap. This is the thing to notice. The pattern is virtually the same across every group, right . Gap, bute same gender a majority of white men and women voting for mitt romney. Remember the most radical thing mitt romney said about women was he had binders full of them. Such ad think, given different candidate in 2016, surely we will see something really different. And the answer is that we did not for white women overall. What is stunning actually is the visibility of this. But i that in a second. It turns out you need to think about race and you need to think about class and you need to think about lots of things to understand voting patterns in the United States and theres always some dynamic going on there. For africanamericans theres actually a small increase. I am not sure that either of them are statistically can significant. I would describe this more as a 2012 effect than 2016. This is a return to more normal patterns among the Africanamerican Community coming down from the heights of support for president obama. What i want to emphasize for the millionth time is all of those gender differences are so small compared to the differences in terms of race, right . Two things can be true at the same time. In general, women are more likely than men, similar men to vote for democrats in the usually what we focus on, since 1980. When we say women are more likely to vote for democrats than are men, what we hear are women are democrats. Most women are democrats. Possibleu can see its for white women to be less likely to vote republican, but still a majority of them to vote for the republican candidate. Let me make one more point. This is incredibly important, because our electorate is only becoming more diverse over time. The great line is the census. The percent of the electorate that is racial minority, so they are not just africanamerican, and over time, the percent of the female electorate is in purple. What you might be able to see is up here the extraordinarily high turnout of minority women. Now very, very close to their presence in the electorate africanamerican women in particular are more likely to vote than white men and they are up by whitepassed women, which is a really Extraordinary Development when you start here in the 1940s. Again, thats a long story we can tell, but my clock is ticking. Let me tell you one more story. I told you this story and i said white women voted for donald trump, but even that turns out to be complicated. Theres no change in women. Nothing interesting happening. Womenain, this is men and voting for mitt romney. This group is women and men who do not have a College Degree. A very small gender gap. But about 60 of women, a little less of women voting for republicans in 2012. Again, there is more support for the republican candidate in 2012. Does that make sense . Hopefully that helps. 2012. Again, no College Degree on the left, College Degree on the right ear and what happens in 2016 . Lets look first at noncollege educated women. What i want you to notice is there is a small increase among white men without a College Degree. If you read the new york only, these are the people being interviewed in diners in pennsylvania, right . [laughter] they go up, but the dramatic change is among noncollege educated women. So much so that they swing for the republican candidate in that gender gap reverses. Again most aggregate say they are probably the same but if anything, white women without a College Degree become more likely to vote for the republican than white men with the College Degree. What happens to collegeeducated men and women. Swing theatterns other way. We see a decline. But again, as we saw with those without a college education, the shift among men is pretty small. It might not even be statistically significant. The shift among women is much more dramatic. If we think about what the differences are between women and men, i again suggest the more interesting political theges happening are differences between different kinds of women. Theres no question that the are probably larger than any of these male and female gaps, if that makes sense. One of the things i hope you leave this room convinced of is that women and here i am going to blow your minds, are as diverse in their interests and identities as men, and when we try to understand how women vote , we want to think about we certainly do not want to think about no women voter. The woman voter wants this. The woman voter wants that. There are lots of different women voters. That doesnt mean that gender doesnt matter. In most cases in different i can show you very similar information. That gender gap tends to persist. That makes noncollege educated women so different. I did see a headline just this collegeat claims non educated women are returning to the democratic fold and we will see how that goes in 2020. What am here to tell you women will do in 2020. [laughter] you will notice that the slide is blank. [laughter] anything,recht if the 2016 election was deeply humbling for Many Political scientists, including myself, and i make no predictions anymore whatsoever. If past is a predictor, i can to need to predict that women will be a very diverse. I assume there will be a gender gap. Thattinue to expect education, race, income are going to be huge, hugely important in 2020 and those gaps are going to be larger than any gender gap. You that, i will say thank for your time and attention and thank you for your questions. [applause] the discussion you presented dealt with Party Differences and i was wondering if you have analysis that looks at issues. Obviously, as the elections proceed, some wouldbe during times of war. In 2008, health care is a big issue and health cares big issue this year. Do you have information on that . Dr. Wolbrecht i do and im try to think what i have in all the other slides. I am capable of speaking without a graph behind me. I will do that. The story about issue differences is similar to the differences, the partisan differences. They exist but they are not enormous. People have tried to understand the gender gap and why women have become more democratic, a lot of people have looked to attitudes about social welfare in particular. In general, women are more supportive programs and Government Policies to help the poor, the infirm, elderly, etc. Again, there are not huge differences but they exist. As you suggested, we know that in general, women tend to be less supportive of the use of force. So, going back to many, many wars and you see that rhetoric in the newspaper coverage as well. Women are voting so they do not send their husbands and their sons to war. So there is that as well. There is evidence in the last 10 to 20 years that women show more tolerance, in general. They move quicker in a liberal direction on things like gay and lesbian rights for example. I will say two additional things about that. A lot of the original gender gap was blamed on womens issues specifically. The other thing that is going to happen in the 1970s, and that comes to head and 1980, is that the parties made apart on womens issues from the early 1970s they are not that different on abortion, probably because nobody is talking about abortion until after roe v. Wade. That is an exaggeration. They move apart on equal rights amendments. This was obvious, the women are going with the party that is moving in what was understood as the feminist direction at that point. That understanding was pretty much debunked in social science almost immediately. The truth is, men and women do not hold dramatically different positions on things like abortion and the equal rights amendment. They are slightly different on may be Sexual Harassment and equal pay, those sorts of things. But they are not very large. The other thing to say to that is that again, women have lots of interest. So they might say they prioritize those issues more. They probably do. But that does not mean those issues override other interests in the state of the economy, in war and peace, as he suggested, etc. At the last addendum i will give and i give long answers, my students will attest to that. Our general model of Democratic Politics is look around the world and we say this is what we should do about social security. And this is what we should do about the environment. And from that we say this is the party closest to my views and then we support that party. And that is a good democratic theory way to thing about it. Everything we know is that partisanship is a value and an identity that can most closely be traced to childhood. That by the age of nine or 10, children know to say we are democrats or we are republicans. And the way we see the world becomes shaped by that partisanship. We are more likely to believe the things said by people that share that identity with us. So, i do not have it with me, but the data on republican Public Opinion about russia, and the switch it has made since donald trump became president in 2016, is enormous. From overwhelmingly negative to much more positive. Right . Because now we have a republican leader sending different signals about russia than previous Republican Leaders had. And im not picking on the republicans, i could show you similar things for democrats as well. I relied a lot on partisanship because i think that is an important driver. It is linked to other identities. It is linked to our racial identities, our religious identities, and our regional identities, cultural identities, etc. In that way it is extremely reinforcing. I will try not to make them all that long. Thank you very much. You mentioned gallup polls and other sources of data. What are your best sources now going into 2020 for that kind of demographic information linked to voting patterns . Dr. Wolbrecht that is a good question. Despite what you have heard, polling is not dead. It has gotten harder. My grandmother would pick up a phone and talk to the person on the end of the line no matter what. People do not do that anymore. It is harder to get people interviewed. But theyre also smart people trying to figure out how to do that better. Some of our academic polls come from organizations that literally in exchange for gift cards or even having a computer in their home, people agree to be part of a monthly survey they take. That will be on everything from cereal to politics. There are a of organizations known for being particularly good at these things. For scholars, that is the America National Elections Study that comes out of michigan. That is not really useful for you though because it does not get released until after the election and then we churned through it. The Pew Research Center is outstanding, excellent. There are a number of surveys done by major newspapers wall , street journal has done one with cvs for a long time. Cbs for a long time. Those are credible and well done. Most of the major longestablished news media sources try to do a good job, by which i mean try to have a truly random sample. Try to ask questions that are not leading and they are not trying to get a certain outcome, etc. Online where people can just where they are not trying to get a certain outcome. Anything done online is for fun and for clicks and not really for knowledge. Do these patterns persist at the state and local levels . Wolbrecht the short answer is yes. A lot of this is rooted in partisanship. One of the interesting moments of the last 20 years is how it nationalized our politics have been. You might vote for one candidate for president. But at the local level you might support a Different Party because you know this guy who is running for the city council. Or, well, he is not of my party, my member of congress, but look at all the good stuff he or she has done for my district. That could explain a lot of voting in the middle of the 20th century. It explains a lot less voting today. So i might look and say, my member of congress, she is a really nice person, but she is going to go vote with that other party when she gets to congress and i do not want that. The reason we see similar patterns are people are bringing that same partisan lens to local and state elections as well. The winning candidate at the state and local levels, it is dominated by the partisan view opposed to there is no list for gender even for women candidates . We know a lot more for women candidates at those levels because there are some. Right . [laughter] the truth is we do not over much about women running for president. Because it is kind of a new thing everybody is doing. So, women running in state legislative races for the house and senate, very well studied. So there are lots of ways to figure out if there is an advantage or disadvantage for women. In recent years, again i mean last 10 years or 20 years when we do experiments, when we show people randomly two candidates and call one jane and one john, it looks like women and democrats actually do have a slight preference for women. Right . We can think about why that might be, the assumptions they might bring that women candidates must be x or y. In the real world, it is very difficult to see any evidence t there is an advantage or and i think this is important a disadvantage to being a female candidate. There does not seem to be a bump either way. If there is a disadvantage, it is mostly for republican women. Because we tend to stereotype women as more liberal, and more collaborative and progressive, to the extent that is not going to fly well with republican constituents. Because they are not liberal and because ideological purity is an important thing on the republican side. That may help them a little. But even that is not enormous. That does not mean there is not bias. When i was in graduate school we would talk about if women run, women win. That seemed to be true, as i said, when women run they is likely to win as men are. So we were talking about how to get more women to run . Research since has shown that, when women run they are equally , likely to win. But it seems to be because they are dramatically overqualified. So the women who run have more qualifications and more experience. So in some ways, it is depressing that they are equally likely as men. I am not saying all of the male candidates are unqualified. But that on average, women only run when they have every degree and every experience in all sorts of background. Way in the back . I want to see you run. [laughter] i, too, was utterly shocked that white women voted for trump. I would like to know, youre talking about women who voted. It is my understanding, many women did not vote because they assumed hillary was going to get it anyway and i do not know if you have any data on that as to how many people figured shes going to win anyway, why bother . Dr. Wolbrecht i do not know if i have data on that particular question. I do not remember. That does not mean it did not happen. Much talk, or any talk about declining turnout among women, in 2016. That does not mean there was not declining turnout among some groups of women. And you might have just given me a good idea for a paper, to take a quick look at that. Youll be a coauthor, its going to be fine. [laughter] this is how i get all my best ideas. The way you describe why women might have not voted, hillary is wasg to win, and that conventional wisdom. Assumes, and in this you would be like every political scientist for other, something of a costbenefit analysis. Right, i am running home from work and i have to get all these things done and do i have time to vote . We know that when it rains, turnout does go down. People say it is not really matter, right . The problem is that conventional analysis almost never works. Because even if we think its really close and its going to make a difference, the probability that your vote makes a difference is very small. Why do people actually turn out to vote . They turned out to vote because they get inherent value from voting. Let me be clear. I feel strongly about the inherent value of voting. It turns out if all of you do not turn out to vote that will have a consequence. Part of that inherent voting is a sense of duty. Certainly people have suggested that one of the reasons womens turnout, and especially African American womens turnout is so high now is because of a sense of duty in general. The girls are more likely to do what they are told. But also that women have a strong sense of community. And the need to vote to represent their community. I was going somewhere with that, and now i am going to forget it. Oh, voting. We also vote because voting is a ritual in which we affirm that we live in a democratic country, and i am part of a democratic process in which citizens get a say in what our elected officials do. I tell my students, i have a cold, dead, Political Science heart and i still tear up everything up time i vote. Because i know people have died to have this right. And how valuable it is to have this form of government. My hypothesis might be different. Way that we saw incredible increases in africanamerican turnout in 2008, with the ability to vote for the first African American president , we might have seen, and my nonrandom circle, some evidence that women felt like, i have to show up for this one. Whether i vote for hillary or not, i still feel like i want to say i was part of this historic moment. Like i said, that is a good question and one i do not have a lot of empirical evidence on. I will be getting back to you with a draft of the paper. Can we do one more after that . I have not been repeating the questions. Im curious, ive heard theres a significant gap in voting patterns between married and unmarried women. Dr. Wolbrecht yes. Could you say more . Dr. Wolbrecht so the question was about differences between married and unmarried women. You are exactly right. Again, as we think about different women and different ways we expect them to behave. Unmarried women, especially unmarried women with children, look very different from varied women and particularly compared to married women with children. In general, married women with children, even when you control for other things, social class, region, ethnicity, race, though sorts of things, are more likely to vote republican than are single women and particular the single mothers. So are single dads. But we cannot say much about them because there are so few of them in. [laughter] to really be able to look at. There a lot of things going on there and i do not think we have the perfect answer about why married women and single men are so distinct. It may be a sense of self interest. It is worth saying we talk a lot about women are so caring, that is why they support social welfare programs. Women are also the vast majority of people working in schools and hospitals, and these sorts of social work agencies. These places where women work. It may be that single women who rely more on their own income, that calculation looks a little bit different. But that is another interesting thing to watch Going Forward and it will be interesting because collegeeducated women are more likely to be married. So that is going to push in two different ways. Last question. You have been waiting so patiently. [indiscernible] dr. Wolbrecht the question was about the blue wave of 2018. That is a great question. I think it is important to say that a lot of things matter in elections. Certainly voters matter in elections and in some sense have the final say. But voters are of course affected by a lot of different things. By activism, by people who come and knock on doors, by the candidates choose to put themselves forward, by whether or not they are getting donations. While womens turnout might not have been dramatically different in 2018, women who were active, attended protest rallies, called members of congress, gave donations to political candidates, organized in their communities, canvassed, you name it, off the charts in 2018. In that sense, everything you have heard is backed up by the data we have. Certainly, women were very blue in 2018. Certainly there were more women candidates by a longshot and we have ever seen before, most of them of course, democrats eyes i say of course but it is only been trip about the last 20 years. I also think the other ways in which women mattered in 2016 is the work of democracy that is so important to making this system work. Thank you for your questions. [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] you are watching American History tv. Covering history cspan style. 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