Moment to please silence your cell phones so that we do not disrupt this fascinating talk. And while youre doing that, i would love to share with you an installation that i recently curated on our north wall entitled antisuffrage. Using materials from the special collections, we take a look at how the Suffrage Movement contributed to redesigning womens roles and responsibilities in society from varied perspectives as they vied for equality. It also presents the struggle to secure Voting Rights for women and people of color in the past and today. Please take a look after the talk. I would love to hear your talks and feedback. And if you have any questions, ill definitely be here to answer them. I should also mention that we have a large expedition in our calderwood gallery across the way. Required reading, reimagining a colonial library. That particular exhibition showcases rarely seen historic books that are treasures of 17th century boston. Community partners and each of us, including you, are asked to consider which books should be considered required reading today. Theres some fascinating and important choices in there by a variety of Different Community partners and theres a place for you to share your own ideas, as well. Free gallery admission to the antisuffrage and required reading exhibition are one of the many benefits of membership here at the e athenaum. Welcome back to all of our members and welcome in to all of our visitors. Were glad youre here. And youre welcome to tour the gallery, pick up a newsletter, find out about the myriad events that we plan here at the front desk and you can join the athenaum as a member, and if youre thinking about it but not quite sure, we also have Day Passes Available now. So come in, check it out, talk with us, spend some time and well hope to see you back again. Now, christina wolbrecht, she is a professor of Political Science, director of the Rooney Center for the study of american democracy, and c. Robert hanley director of the Washington Program at the university of notre dame. In addition to the books she will discuss tonight, she is the author and coauthor of counting womens ballots female voters from suffrage through the new deal and the politics of women womens rights, parties, positions, and change, as well as myriad articles on women as political role models, the representation of women, and Party Positions on education policy. How have american women voted in the first 100 years since the ratification of the 19th amendment. How have popular understandings of women as voters both persisted and changed over time. In a century of votes for women, our speaker tonight offers an unprecedented account of women voters in american politics over the last ten 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 for me 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 a really exciting day for me to be here, talking to all of you. This is actually the release day for a century of votes for women and im just [ applause ] thank you. And im just really excited to be here and talking to you about that book today. So, as you probably know, 2020 is the centennial of womens suffrage. Its been 100 years since the 19th amendment prohibited the denial of Voting Rights on the basis of sex, which is, of course, what the 19th amendment did. Since that time, of course, the question on everyones minds, journalists, voters themselves, definitely politicians, what would women voters do . What should we expect of women voters . And as theo already suggested, what we see when we look over this 100year period is lots and lots of ideas about what it is women are going to do, how impactful theyre going to be as voters, what the kind of things that might affect their voting behavior. So the headlines here date from the pet yt petticoat on from 1928. And women may decide the election which is from 2016. And i do promise you in this, were going to start in the 20s, but we will get to 2016. And maybe even 2020 by the end. And so what i want to do is use a couple of examples of some 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 youll take away from this lecture is to think about the ways in which what we 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, theyre going to craft their appeals, theyre going to design Public Policy all in ways to try to appeal to what they have in mind as a women voter. We know, however, that white married women in the suburbs are not actually a very large proportion of the female electorate. Theyve become less so over time. So again, i want to help us think about, what do we think we know about women voters and what do we actually know . So im going to start with the very first, what i like to call the twitter hot takes about women in the early 1920s. So the very first conventional wisdom about women voters was this idea that womens 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 washington post, harpers magazine, et cetera. Now, it wasnt just journalists who concluded almost immediately after the 19th amendment that womens suffrage had been a failure. This is something that scholars tended to believe as well. For reasons i can talk more about, we actually have very, very little data about women voters in the period immediately after suffrage. As you probably are aware, citizens do not place pink and blue ballots into ballot boxes. So we dont actually from the official voting record have a way to know how men and women voted. Theres one exception to that, which is illinois, which because of the unusual way they initially enfranchised women, actually did count mens and womens ballots differently. In 1916 and then in 1920. What that means is virtually everything that we know about how women voted comes from one state and two elections. Before George Gallup and everyone else is going to invent survey research in the 1930s and 1940s. We see this also in sort of popular histories. F frederick lew allen book, the American Woman won the suffrage vote in 1920 and seemed to be very little interested in it once she had it. I think i just skipped no, i did not. So what do we actually know . In some ways, we kind of excuse observers in the 1920s. They didnt have much to go on. They were out there interviewing Party Leaders and trying to understand. What this graph is going to show you, over time from 1920 to 1936, those five election, the turnout rates of men in gold and women in purple. And as you can see, in the first elections after women win the right to vote, theres quite a gap. Theres about 30some points between the turnout of men in 1920, which is almost 70 of men are turning out to vote, this is from a sample of ten states which aisle show you in just a minute, and about a third of women in that first election after the 19th amendment are turning out to vote so in some sense, it looks like theres some truth to this story that women, most women, a majority of women did not actually choose to use that new right once they had it. The story gets a little bit more complicated if we start to look at different groups of women. And thats going to be another theme of my stock. To talk about the women voter is makes almost no sense in american politics. Here, i want to talk about women, depending upon where they livid. So this is showing you turnout of, again, women in purple, men in gold, in ten american states. And im going to try to speak i cant read it very well here. Virginia is at the end, our own massachusetts is next. Connecticut, oklahoma, minnesota, kansas, illinois, iowa, missouri, and kentucky. And what i hope you can see is that theres a huge variation, depending on where you lived in whats womens turnout look like in 1920. In some places, womens turnout was incredibly low. Fewer than 10 turned out to vote in virginia in 1920. Only a little bit higher, just around 20 , here in massachusetts and in connecticut. On the other hand, there were other places where the turnout of women was actually quite impressive. More than half of women took advantage of the right to vote the first time they were able to do so, in both missouri and kentucky. So the question is, what is different about missouri and kentucky compared to massachusetts, virginia, and connecticut, right . What is happening in these two different states . As you can see, we have similar patterns among men. Turnout is much higher here on my your right. Than on my left. One of the things that this data reminds us of is that in the united states, the we have the right to vote, but the obligation rests almost entirely upon the individual. Youve got to register yourself, youve got to get to a polling place. Youve got to know when to vote. Youve got to maybe pay a poll tax or register far in advance of the election. And what that means is that different groups capacities to overcome barriers and differences in the barriers that they face are going to explain a lot about how much people vote and how likely they are to turn out on election day. So what makes these two different places different . Virginia, massachusetts, and connecticut all had, for example, a large number of electoral laws that provided barriers to many voters. They had poll taxes or literacy tests, which i believe connecticut and virgin both had. They have long registration periods. Its worth saying, i dont have any of those four states up here, but in four southern states, women actually did not vote in the president ial election of 1920. Those states had sixmonthlong registration periods, at least six months, if not longer. The 19th amendment was ratified in august, about six or so weeks before the election in november. Those four states said, im sorry, its nice youve been enfranchised, but you missed the registration deadline, so well see you in 1924. Other states, including massachusetts, had similar restrictions but found ways to let women vote. If you read the boston almanac, the report from the Electoral Office in 1920, you can tell that they were a little put out, because the state legislator met and it first told them, youve got to take all the women who are registered for school board elections, because we let them do that, and move them over to the regular. And then you have to hold all of those special days just for women to come and vote. So theres this passive aggressive, it was much work, but we managed to register all of these women to vote. We know that the places that have more electoral restrictions are going to have lower turnout. And that was, of course, the very point of most of these restrictions. So in virginia, things like a poll tax and a literacy test are meant to seclude exclude, in pa, of course, africanAmerican Voters. I would love to tell you more about how some africanamerican women in virginia got around that and actually did vote in early elections. But of course, most did not. But also to exclude poor whites and also, were going to see how it had a particularly strong effect on women rather than men. If youre going to pay a poll tax in your house and you cant afford to, youre probably going to pay it for the male head of household and not for the woman. And in massachusetts and connecticut. Massachusetts in 1920, as was connecticut, 60 of the population was first or secondgeneration immigrant. The purpose of those laws were for those who were already in power were to try to keep these immigrants away from polls and not having as big of an impact on voting, and im happy to talk more about that, as well. Missouri and kentucky had very few Voter Registration requirements. No poll tax, no literacy test, et cetera. The other thing that makes this two groups of states different is the level of competition. The 1920s were a time period in which most american states were overwhelmingly blue or overwhelmingly red. This is the solid democratic south, that in most elections in the south in this period, theres not even republicans being fielded or nominated for office, right . On the other hand, massachusetts and connecticut are overwhelmingly red during this period. Theyll be one of the dramatic switches in the new deal, period. But are overwhelmingly republican held during this period. Among these ten states, the only two that would be classified as competitive during this period are, and you guessed it, missouri and kentucky. The president ial election in 1920 was decided by 0. 05 of the vote. What happens when elections are competitive . Elections are really salient, theres a lot of campaigning, the parties have an incentive to reach out to every single vote. Suddenly those norms about women not voting dont seem nearly as important in an election thats going to be that very close. What we know is that these effects tend to be larger for women than for men. So what this is showing is that women on the left and men on the right, the gold is places that had a lot of election restrictions and the purple is places that had almost none. So for both men and women, theres a dropoff. If you live in a place with lots of laws, youre not going to see as much turnout. But the dropoff is even greater for women than it is for men. These were 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, the south. Gold are republican places, mostly the north and the west and the few competitive patter s s we have. A bigger impact for women of these sorts of laws. I want you to be watching throughout as im showing lots and lots of graphs, that while there are always gender differences, the patterns are still the same. It turns out that men and women are both rational, reasonable human beings who pay some attention to politics and have views on these sorts of things. So for given the generations of resistance tosuffrage, i think its always worth remembering that women got enfranchised and while some were disappointed there was no revolution, the fact that there wasnt suggests that this was a population that was perfectly capable of let me put it this way, were at least as capable as men were of participating in elections. Now, what this means is that the difference between the turnout, the average turnout of a woman in kentucky and a woman in virginia is 50 points. That and let me point out, that difference is larger than the difference between women and men in any one of those states. If you want to understand turnout, its better to know where someone lived than whether she they were a man or a woman. So the overall gap in 1920 is just 32 points between men and wom women. But the gap between different kinds of women, women who lived in the south and competitive border states is much larger than that. And thats going to be a theme youll hear again tonight, as well. That there are lots of differences between women that dramatically outpace any difference between women and men in general. I will point out, because we are going to jump to the future coming closer to the end of this talk, since 1980, so 60 years after the 19th amendment was t rati ratified, women very more likely to turn out in president ial elections than men. That difference has grown a little bit over time, but it is fairly steady. Again, youll see when turnout goes up with one, it goes up with another. But nonetheless, women have been more likely to turnout to vote since 1980. Now, mr. Allen has more to say about women voters. She goes on to say, not only was she very little interested in voting once she could, but she voted, but mostly as the unreengine rat men about her did. What did mr. Allen mean by this . Another really popular conventional wisdom that we start in the 1950s, that men reported to be telling women how they ought to vote, is a headline from the boston globe in the 1920s. The second headline is from the Detroit Free Press in the 1950s. So for most of the first half of the 20th century, this presumption that women voted the way that their husbands told them was really prominent. 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. Oh, we thought women were so different and theyre voting the same that men are in general. What could possibly be the reason . The reason was men were telling their wives how to vote. I will tell you a little 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 there. These this conventional wisdom has consequences. So in the 1930s, George Gallup and some others, eventually fred harris and some others become the first sort of folks doing sophisticated polling in the united states, where theyre randomly selecting people, theyre using good methods, and we finally have this opportunity in a systemic way, to better understand the attitudes, the thoughts, and the behaviors of people in lots of ways, what kind of serial they buy, but also, of course, what kind of candidates they support. In his first polls in the 30s and the 40s, the first good data that we have, george cleanup purposefully undersampled women. And the reason was, he was trying to understand how people decided who to vote for. And as far as he was concerned, there was no puzzle when it came to women. Women would just do what their husbands told them the night before. So if you want to understand how people decide how to vote, you really have to focus on men. And see their thought process and their understanding. And so the data is not great if you want to understand anything about women during this period. Im about to violate a rule and put a lot of words up on a power point slide. You dont need to read these off. If you had the luck to go to graduate school in Political Science and study american politics, these would all be names written upon your heart. These were the very first studies, systemic, scholarly studies done of voters in the united states. The first book reporting on elections in 48 and 52 is called voting, out of columbia university. The second quote is from the famous book, the american voter, published in 1960, about 52 and 56. And then the last is a quote from a book chapter that really forms the foundation of virtually all studies of Public Opinion in the united states. And i bring these up, because as i just suggested, graduate students and scholars of american politics still read these books. They have shaped, mostly because theyre very well done in almost every way, every other way, our understanding of American Voters and what we teach to undergraduates and the way that our scholarship goes about for generations since, right . This is really important work and many of these people created the first scholarly surveys, twohourlong Election Study thats been done every year since 1948, president ial Election Study. So what do these scholars that are going to shape generations of us, thinking about american elections, what did they decide about women voters in the middle of the 20th century . What they decided is that women are mostly doing what their husbands tell them to do. They also observe that men and women arent that different in their political views and these are the sort of conclusions they come to. So in the second one, the wife that votes but otherwise pays little attention to politics tends to leave not only the sifts of information to her husband, but abides by his ultimate decision, as well. Or the wife is very likely to follow her husbands opinions, however imperfectly she may have absorbed their justifications at a more complex level. So these are scholars. These are people bringing evidence to bear. So lets look at some of that evidence. Im now focusing on the very top quote. And what i want to emphasize to you about this one is that it makes four empirical claims. Four claims of fact that we could, in fact, evaluate. The first is that husbands tell their wives how to vote. So theres a direction of influence. The second claim, they do not particularly respect them. So men when it comes to politics do not particularly respect their lives. On the side of wives, there is trust. On the side of husbands, there is the need to reply or guide two more empirical claims. This is long before excel, these are the actual graphs that show up in that book to support these claims. What youre going to see is whether a woman or a man said she would go to a Family Member to discuss a political question in june. And whether or not a woman or a man said they would discuss politics with Family Members in october. One of the things theyre trying to show, not surprisingly, is that people talk more about politics right before an election than they do in the summer, which still remains true. I want to focus, though, on specifically what those questions said. Have you talked politics with anyone recently . Who was the last person you discussed the election or the candidates with . It is absolutely suggested by this data that women are more likely to talk to Family Members about politics than other people. Whether or not that also means women are more likely to take directions from their husbands remember, the question isnt even about husbands, its about Family Members, is not something that they directly observe or ask about. Did women take directions from their husbands . Maybe. Probably some of them did. I just dont know very women from this particular data, okay . Its worth saying that, you know, one principle of social science would be just how likely are you to talk to anyone. If we know, as we do that this is a period in which a large percentage of women did not work outside the home, simply the probability that the last person you talked to was a Family Member will be a lot higher for women than its going to be for men. So i cannot tell you that women didnt take direction from their husbands. They certainly may have. But i am going to tell you that the empirical evidence for that is not particularly strong. Now, there are at least three more empirical claims being made here about men and their respect for their wives. Theres no evidence here ppt whats happening, people are looking at fantastics and saying, what explains those facts . And explanation for those facts will be rooted in our sort of understanding in the way the world works. And if my understanding of the way the world works is that women arent inherently very interested in politics, that the traditional family structure, the man is the leader of the family and would give instructions to the rest of his family, im going to look at this information and say, obviously, this is whats going to happen or this is chast happening. I want to be clear, we still do this today. Another sort of lesson we want to come out of our book is, we need to really always be thinking about the biases and assumptions we bring to evalu e evaluating political information, any kind of information whatsoever. There were people with other ideas. Im guessing you cannot read this. There was a writer in the New York Times in 1956 and this says, if married couples tend to vote the same way, it is because the environment gives them the same orientation, rather than because the women rubber stamps the mans choice. In social science, we would call that another hypothesis and one that we would certainly like to have the data to be able to understand. And now that we do, i can tell you that sure enough, married couples tend to have lots of shared classharacteristics that also associated with how they vote in president ial and other elections. Everyones excited now. So its very easy to pick on the past, i say, in this beautiful historical building. And to say welcome back then, they didnt know, there were different gender norms and we have had such dramatic changes. And we have. It is remarkable the changes in womens lived experiences from 1920 through 2020. No question. So when we get to 2016, surely were going to have so much more data and so much more information. Were really going to understand whats going to happen. Now, i went into 2016 thinking, this is my year. I have studied women in politics going on 25 years now. Were going to have a woman nominee. Im ready. I have trained for this, right . And the women nominee turns out to be the tenth most interesting thing or different or historic thing happening in the 2016 electi election. So on one side, we have the first woman nominee of a major party. On the other side, we have this unusual nominee, and by unusual, i mean, no military or political experience, et cetera, et cetera, nominee, who i will not repeat to you the things he has both been credibly accused of doing and has said about women. So, obviously, obviously, were going to have a giant gender gap in 2016, right . And so npr on the top, this is the popular voting website, 538 on the bottom, right . Preelection, were going to have a giant gender gap. Of course women are going to vote for hillary clinton. Of course women are going to vote against donald trump, because, and i want to keep in mind what the assumption is there, because 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 vote against president trump. So let me explain what this is. This is the gender gap in president ial elections from 1952 through 2012. And basically, its the different in percent women voting democratic minus percent men. And what that means is that when the line, as it is in 52, 56, and 60 is below that zero, women were actually slightly more republican than were men. And for the most part, thats what we see prior to the 1960s. And i would be happy to talk more about that, as well. When we do all this media stuff, theres all of this stuff about women fainting over john kennedy, and more of them actually voted for richard nixon. Its really not until 1980, which is the second bump i can talk about, 76 if folks want me to, that we really get a systemic, what we in Political Science would call the modern gender gap as opposed to the traditional one, in which women on average are more likely than men on average to vote for democratic candidates. The largest there is going to be in 1996, the reelection of bill clinton. But whats going to happen in 2016 . Surely this race is going to get us the biggest gender gap weve ever seen. I want you to all sort of prepare yourself. Here it comes. I dont know if you missed that. There it is. One of the ways and im going to dispute my own claim in just two seconds. What i say to students is, for the most unusual president ial election, certainly in modern times, when people actually showed up on election day, the patterns were pretty consistent. Including the fact that 90 of women who identified as republicans voted for the republican nominee and 90 of women who voted for who identify as democrats voted for the democratic candidate. Pretty much the same percentage as did men in both of those camps, as well. Now, the media caught on to this idea that not all women are the same in sort of the fallout from 2016. And so we had lots of attention to the reality that 52 of white women, a majority, a very slim majority, but a majority of white women voted for donald trump in 2016, right . And the question becomes, how . Why . How can we possibly understand this, right . So what im showing you now is the percentage of white women who voted for the republican nominee since 1952. Theyre going to be in gold, and the percentage of africanamerican women who voted for the republican nominee in purple. And what youre going to see is theres really only been two instances since the 1950s in which a majority of white women have voted for the democratic candidate. One in 1964, which as you can see, everybody voted against barry goldwater. And then again in 1996, where by coincidence, we saw this really large gender gap. If you have really good eyes, youre noticing that 1992 looks like that, too. This is the twoparty vote if we add in the fact that ross perot got 19 of the vote in 1992, none of the candidates got a majority of votes from white women. So i want to focus on just these two. And of course what we see is this cavern in the voting preferences of white women and africanamerican women. So i want to and i will also say, so this is latino women. We have not had that data as long. I would also argue that weve really been focused on the black white racial gap and theres really interesting stuff happening among this growing part of the population thats latino that will be very important Going Forward. What im showing you here, in 2016, women, again, are in gold, women are in purple. Whites, to my far right, and then africanamerican, the president in 2012 voting for the republican candidate. So extremely low levels of africanamerican support from men or for women, for mitt romney in 2012, and we see that same gender gap. And this is another thing to notice. The pattern is usually the same across virtually every group, right . And we see the same pattern, a gender gap, but a majority of white men and women voting for mitt romney. Remember, the most radical thing that mitt romney said about women is that he had binders full of them. And so we would think, given such a different candidate in 2016, surely were going to see something really different. And the answer is that we did not. For white women, overall. What is stunning, actually, would be the stability of this. But im going to kpliscomplicatt even more in just a second. Turns out you need to think about race and class and lots of things to understand voting patterns in the united states. And that theres always sort of some dynamic going on there. For africanamericans, there was actually a small increase. Im not sure that either of those statistically significant, in support. I would describe this more of a 2012 effect than a 2016. This is return to more normal patterns coming down to the heights of support from president obama in 2008 and in 2012. What i want to emphasize, i hope is for the millionth time, is that all of those gender differences are so small compared to the differences in terms of race, right . So two things can be true at the same time. In general, women are more likely than men, similar men, to vote for democrats. And thats usually what wave focused on since 19 80. This idea of a gender gap. And when we say women are more likely to vote for democrats than men, what we hear is women are democrats. Most women are democrats. But as you can see, its possible for white women to be less likely to vote republican, but still a majority of them to vote for the republican candidate. Leapt me complicate let me make one more point. This is incredibly important, because our electorate is growing only more diverse over time. The gray line is here is for the census. The percent of the electorate that is racial minority, so any not just africanamerican, and over time, the percent of the female electorate that is minority, thats going to be in purple, and the percent of the male minority that is, that is minority, as well. What you might be able to see is up here, the extraordinarily high turnout of minority women, now sort of very, very close to their presence in the electorate. Africanamerican women in particular are more likely to vote than white women and are only barely passed up by white women, which is a really Extraordinary Development when you start, of course, here, in the 1940s, right . And again, thats a long story that we could tell, but my clock is ticking. So im going to tell you one more story. So i told you this story and said that white women voted for donald trump. But even that is pretty complicated. And maybe you could have gone away thinking, there was no change in women, nothing interesting happening. So this is member an and women, whites, in 2012 voting for mitt romney. The difference is this is women and men who do not have a College Degree. Whatever level of education, but have not gone on and gotten a College Degree. Again, a very small gender gap, but about 60 of men, a little less of women voting for republicans in 2012. This is the data for women and men who have at least a College Degree. The same overall pattern, but lower support for the republican candidate in 2012. Does that make sense . I know im just flipping so many graphs up there. But hopefully that helps. This is 2012, again, no College Degree on the left and College Degree on the right. So what happens in 2016. Lets look first at noncollegeeducated women. What i want you to notice is that theres a small increase among wlit men without a College Degree. If you read the New York Times, these are the only people being interviewed in diners in pennsylvania, right . And the truth is, they go up a little bit in their republican support, but not dramatically. The dramatic shift, especially in such a close election, is among noncollegeeducated women. So much so that they swing to the republican candidate that that gender gap, where theyre supposed to be more democratic than men reverses. Again, probably most accurate to say theyre about the same, but if anything, white women without a College Degree become more likely to vote republican than are white men without a College Degree. What happens to collegeeducated men and women . Here, the pattern is moving the other way. We see a decline among whites with a College Degree in support for the republican candidate in 2016. 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. And so, again, as we think about what the differences are between women and men, i want to again suggest that much more of the interesting political change is happening in the differences between different kinds of women. So theres no question that the gap between noncollegeeducated women here, and College Educated women here in 2016 is probably larger than any of these male and female gaps, if that makes sense. So 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 are men. And that when we try to understand how women vote, we want to think about we certainly dont want to think about the women voter. Nobody tends to say that anymore, but for a long time, the woman voter wants this, the woman voter wants that. There are lots of different kinds of women voters. That doesnt mean gender doesnt matter. What weve seen in most cases, youre looking at one exception now, is that in different racial groups, in different education groups, i can show you very similar information, just like this for income, we tell a similar story, that gender gap tends to persist. In fact, what makes sort of noncollegeeducated women so interesting here is that its one place where we see that changing. Now, i did see a headline just this week that claims that noncollegeeducated women are returning to the democratic fold and well see how that goes in 2020. So i am here to tell you, what women will do in 2020. You will notice that the slide is blank. If anything, i will say that the 2016 election was deeply humbling for Many Political scientists, including myself, so i make no predictions anymore, whatsoever. The past is always our best predictor of the future. I predict that women will continue to be very diverse. I assume there will still be a gender gap. I continue to expect that education, race, income, are going to be hugely important to thinking about vote choice in 2020, and that those gaps, in most cases, are going to be larger than any gender gap. And with that, i will say thank you for your time and attention and welcome your questions. [ applause ] please. Let the person with the microphone come running up. All of the discussion that you presented dealt with party differences. Yeah. And i was wondering if you had any analysis that looked at issues. Because, obviously, as the elections proceed, some would be during times of war, 2008, health care, health care is a big issue this year. Do you have any information on that . I do. Im trying to think of what i have in all of the other slides that are coming to show you, but i am capable of speaking without a graph behind me, so i will do that. So the story about issue differences is pretty similar to the differences the partisan differences, which is that they exist, but theyre not enormous. So when people are trying to understand the gender gap and why women have become more democratic, a lot of people have rightfully looked to attitudes about social welfare. In general, women are more support i have of programs and Government Policies to help the poor, the infirm, the elderly, et cetera. Again, theyre not huge differences, but they do exist. As you suggested, we also know that in general, women tend to be less supportive of the use of force. And so going back to many, many and you see that a lot in the newspaper coverage, as women. Women are voting so they dont send their husbands and sons to war. So theres that, as well. The other one i was going to say was, theres good evidence that certainly now, and by now i mean the last 10 or 20 years, women show more tolerance in general, particularly they moved quicker in a liberal direction on things like gay and lesbian rights, for example. But im then im going to say two additional things about that. A lot of the original gender gap was blamed on womens issues, specifically, right . So the other thing thats going to happen in the 70s that comes to a head in the 1980s is that the parties move apart on womens issues. In the early 1970s, theyre not that different on abortion, partly because no ones talking about abortion, until after roe v. Wade. Thats an exaggeration, a little. They move apart on the equal rights amendments, which is of course back in the news again, et cetera. Everyone who looks at this says, this is just obvious. Women are going with the tea party that was moving in what was understood as the feminist direction in that point. That understanding was pretty much debunked in social science almost immediately. The truth is that men and women do not hold dramatically different positions on things like abortion and the equal rights amendment. They are slightly different on maybe Sexual Harassment and equal pay and those sorts of things, but theyre not very large. The other thing to say about that is, again, women have lots of interest. Women might say they prioritize those issues a little more and they probably do, but it doesnt mean that those issues override other interests in the state of the economy, in war and peace, as you suggested, et cetera. And the last addendum ill give and i give this long of answers to all questions, so you just need to prepare yourself. My students will attest to that. Our general model of Democratic Politics is that we 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 then from that, we say, this is the party thats closest to my views and then we support that party. And certainly, thats a good sort of democratic theory way to think 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 9 or 10, children know to say, we are democrats or we are republicans. And that actually, 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 dont have it with me, but the data on republican Public Opinion about russia and the switch that 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 president , 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. So what that is is a way to say, i relied a lot on partisanship here, because i think thats a really important driver to things that are going on. And its linked to other identities, right . Its linked to our racial identities and linked to our religious identities. And its linked to our regional identities, cultural identities, et cetera. And in that way, its extremely reinforcing. Ill try not to make them all that long. Thank you very much. Please, im sorry. You mention ed 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. Thats a great question. Despite what youve heard, polling is not dead. Its gotten a lot harder, you know, my grandmother, she picked up the phone would talk to the person on the other line, no matter what. People dont do that anymore, right . So its harder to get people interviewed, but there are also some smart people trying to figure out how to do that a little bit better. And so 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 sort of survey that they take and thats going to be on everything from cereal to politics sort of a thing. There are a couple of organizations that are known for being particularly good at these things. So for scholars, thats the American NationalElection Study that comes out of michigan. Thats not really useful to you, though, because that stuff doesnt get released until after the election and then we kind of churn through it. The Pew Research Center is outstanding, excellent. And their graphs are just beautiful. That would be my goal. You can tell, i really love my graphs. There are a number of surveys done by major newspapers. So wall street journal has done one with cbs for a long time. Those are also very credible and well done. And so im reluctant to say this, in a period of a lot of distrust about the news media, 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 arent leading and that they arent trying to get a uncertain outcome, et cetera. Anything done online, where people can just call in or register their opinions, you dont need to bother looking at that, because thats thats for fun and for clicks. And not really for knowledge. All the data that you presented tonight was all on president ial elections. Yeah. Do these patterns persist at the state and local levels as well . Thats a great question and the short answer is yes. I, of course, am not going to give the short answer, but the short answer is yes. Again, because a lot of this is rooted in partisanship. And one of the really interesting developments of the last 20 years is how national id our politics have been. The idea that you might vote for one president one candidate for president , but at the local level, you might support a Different Party because you know this guy whos running for the city council. Or, well, hes 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. I might look and i might say, my member of congress, shes a really nice person, because shes going to go vote with that other party when she gets to congress, and i dont want that. So the reason we see those similar patterns are in part because people are bringing that same partisan lens to local and state elections, as well. So a follow up on that. Yes . Women candidates at the state and local levels, its all dominated by the partisan view, as opposed to theres no left about gender, even for women candidates . So we know a lot more about women candidates at those levels, because there are some, right . So because there are some. Right . The truth is we dont know very 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 for the senate, very well studied. So theres lots of ways to figure out if theres an advantage or disadvantage for women. In recent years, again i mean last 10 or 20 years, when we do experiments, when we show people randomly to 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. Et cetera. In the real world it is very difficult to see any evidence that 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 is more liberal, and more collaborative and progressive, to the extent that is not going to fly well with republican constituents. Because theyre 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 theres 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 theyre likely to win as men are. So we were talking about how to get more women to run . That must be what we focus on. Research since has shown that, when women on they are equally likely to win. But it seems to be because they are dramatically overqualified. So the women who run have more qualifications, more experience, et cetera. So in some ways it is depressing that they are equally likely as men. Im not saying all the men candidates are unqualified. Im saying on average women only run when they have every degree and every experience in all sorts of background. Hi there. One way in the back. Then ill come up here. I want to see you run. Im so sorry. I, too, was utterly shocked that white women voted for trump. Im sorry dr. Freud is not alive. 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 any way. And i dont know if you have any data on that as to how many people said, well, shes going to win any way, why bother . 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 climbing 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, is going to be fine. Thank you. This is how i get all my best ideas. The way you describe why women might have not voted, hillary is going to win it. And certainly, that was the conventional wisdom. Assumes, and in this you would be like every political scientist forever, something of a costbenefit analysis. So im running home from work, i have to get all these things done, oh, 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 cost benefit analysis almost never works, because even if you think its really close, only if i vote it will make a difference. The probability that your vote makes a difference is incredibly small. Why do people actually turn out to vote . They turn out to vote because i 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 Americans 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 to go somewhere else with that in just one second, now im 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 are part of a democratic process in which citizens get a say in who our elected officials do. I tell my students, i have a cold, dead, Political Science heart and i still tear up every single time i vote. Because i know people have died to have this right. And how valuable it is to have that form of government and how important it is. So my hypotheses might be different in that in the same 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 in 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. Ill get back to you with a draft of the paper. I have a question. I think there was a can we do one more after that . I said we would call up here. And i have not been repeating the questions. I was curious, i heard theres quite a significant gap in voting patterns between married and unmarried women. Yes. Could you say a little bit more . 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 our single women and particularly single mothers. So are single dads, but we cannot say much about them because there are so few of them to look at. Theres a lot of things going on there, and i dont think we have the perfect answer yet about why married women and single women 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 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 sort of push in two different ways. Last question here because youve been waiting so patiently. [ inaudible question ] so the question was about the blue wave of 2018. Thats a great question. The i think whats important to say is 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 who choose to put themselves forward. By whether or not they are getting donations. While womens turnout might not have been medically different in 2018, women who were active, attended protest rallies, called to the 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 long shot than weve ever seen before. Most of them, of course, democrats. I say of course, thats only been true for the last 20 years. I also think the other ways in which women mattered in 2016 is the network of democracy that is so important for making this system work. Thank you for your question. Television has changed since cspan began 41 years ago, but our mission continues. To provide an unfiltered view of government, already this year we brought you primary election coverage, the president ial impeachment process, and now the federal response to the coronavirus. You can watch all of cspans public programming on television, online or listen on our free radio app. And be part of the National Conversation through cspans daily Washington Journal Program or through our social media feeds. Cspan, a Public Service and brought to you today by your television provider. Coming up on cspan3, American History tshv looks at e impact of women in the u. S. , well start about the 1959 film of the hiring of africanamerican women after prt eisenhowers order. Thats followed by a history lecture, and then Iowa State University class on the history of womens work on family farms. Later, the legend and legacy of amelia earhart. Were featuring American History tv programs in prime time this week as a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan3. Tonight, with many colleges and universities closing campuses, were giving you the opportunity for your own Distance Learning with ahtvs lectures in history series. Well feature American History classes from universities in the Atlantic Coast conference including clemson, university of North Carolina chapel hill, wake forest and duke. Seth jacobs from Boston College tips off the night with a class on president Lyndon Johnson and the escalation of the vietnam war. American history tv, tonight at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan3. Next, reel america a Weekly Program where American History tv plays an archival film from the National Video vault. Over the next 30 minutes a look at racial tensions caused by the first hiring a black secretary by a federal contractor. After president eisenhower ordered equal Employment Opportunities with government contracts. This 1959 film was produced by the president s committee on government contracts. [ laughter ]