Different Voting Patterns Between the Sexes
Women & Men Are Different!
Sex differences in polls and surveys like the Gallup Poll | Men | Women | Percent Difference | Factor Women:Men |
Blame guns for shooting tragedies | 47% | 73% | 26% | 1.6x |
Correctly answered TIMSS Item G13 | 40% | 7% | 33% | 0.175 |
Voted for Clinton in 1996 | 45% | 54% | 9% | 1.2x |
Democrats who support Bradley | 52% | 38% | 14% | 0.73 |
Personally know someone who was physically abused | 46% | 60% | 14% | 1.3x |
Report being physically abused | 22% | 8% | 14% | 0.36 |
Believe women are paid less than they are worth | 13% | 30% | 17% | 2.3x |
Employed full time | 65% | 45% | 20% | 0.69 |
What sex do Americans want their children to be | 35% | 23% | 12% | 0.66 |
What sex do Thais want their children to be | 44% | 27% | 17% | 0.61 |
Unfavorable opinion of Hillary Clinton | 59% | 43% | 16% | 0.73 |
Fan of Princess Diana | 38% | 63% | 25% | 1.66x |
Football fan | 60% | 33% | 27% | 0.55 |
Report being victim of spousal abuse | 37% | 26% | 9% | 0.7 |
Defendants who used a knife to kill their spouse | 19% | 37% | 18% | 2.0x |
Defendants who contracted to have their spouse killed | 3% | 6% | 3% | 2.0x |
Cried about 9/11 | 13% | 29% | 16% | 2.2x |
Fail to Start P250 Pump | 0% | 75% | 75% | infinity |
![]() | Other differences between the sexes. |
![]() | Men have 3 1/2 billion more brain cells than women. |
First, download and read John Lott's excellent analysis of the affects of the 19th Amendment, then read the following carefully to understand what the Nineteenth Amendmend did to the US.
http://papers.ssrn.com/paper.taf?abstract_id=160530
or
The 'Gender Gap' explained: Robbing Peter
& Paul to pay Mary!
by Samuel Silver
Jewish World
Review
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/sam/silver.html
Oct. 31,
2000
IF YOU THINK the gender gap in electoral politics is a recent phenomenon, think again. It began in 1870 and has continued to grow. In recent presidential elections from 1980 to 1996, the difference in voting patterns between men and women has been 14-17 percentage points with the exception of 1992, which had only a 5% "gap." As we approach the 2000 presidential election, early opinion polls estimate a smaller than average gap, perhaps because George W. Bush understands the gender gap better than most.
Why is there a gender gap, and what
implications does it have for our
society? The gender gap is deeper and more
complex than the few "women's
issues" commonly discussed in the media. At its
root, it is more basic than
gun safety, abortion, or tobacco. A recent study
reported in the highly
respected and peer-reviewed Journal of Political
Economy helps us understand
and quantify the gender gap. The paper, "Did
Women's Suffrage Change the
Size and Scope of Government?" was written by
John Lott, Jr. of Yale
University and Lawrence Kenny of the University of
Florida. Yes, this is the
same John Lott that wrote More Guns, Less Crime.
The study concludes: "Giving women the right
to vote significantly changed
American politics from the very beginning.
Despite claims to the contrary,
the gender gap is not something that has
arisen since the 1970's. Suffrage
coincided with immediate increases in state
government expenditures and
revenue, and these effects continued growing as
more women took advantage of
the franchise. Similar changes occurred at the
federal level as female
suffrage led to more liberal voting records for the
state's U.S. House and
Senate delegations." Of course, all women do not
prefer bigger government.
For example, if the gender gap is 16%, that would
yield 58% liberal versus
42% conservative voting; thus 42% of women support
conservative political
policies. Therefore, for this analysis we are only
interested in the group
that votes differently at the margin.
Lott & Kenny hypothesize that a major
reason women tend to vote for larger
and more liberal government is women's
inherently higher aversion to risk.
They concluded, ".the gender gap in part
arises from women's fears that they
are being left to raise their children on
their own. If this result is true,
the continued breakdown of the family and
the higher divorce rates imply
growing political conflicts between the
sexes."
This fear is well known by the liberal/left
wing of American politics. Susan
Estrich, former campaign manager for Michael
Dukakis' Presidential campaign,
states her new book, Sex & Power: "Bush
is ahead among married women. Gore
is strongest among those women who live
alone and support their children.
The promise of a safety net counts for more
with those who don't have a male
version of one."
One of the calamities of the 20th Century has
been the successful attack on
the traditional two-parent family. The
"abolition of the family" and ending
the dependence "of the wife upon the
husband and of the children upon the
parents" were specific goals of The
Communist Manifesto! Marx and Engels
failed unequivocally in Russia, but have
continued to succeed in America
through their current followers (conscious or
subconscious) in academia, the
media, and politics.
Traditionally women had a vast support system
for their children, from
husbands, to immediate family, to extended family,
to church or synagogue,
to community based charitable organizations. The left
has worked to
undermine these support mechanisms, replacing them with their
"village,"
otherwise known as centralized government, which by necessity they
must
control.
They have:
belittled and ridiculed religion and traditional values.
eliminated the shame and stigma of violating traditional Judeo-Christian
values that were the bedrock of western civilization.devalued marriage and minimized the harmful effects of divorce.
debased our language and art.
glorified the birth of children out of wedlock, especially those without
male fathers in their lives.replaced objective values and judgments with subjective, relativistic mush.
replaced right and wrong with anything goes.
replaced moral and rational thinking with amoral legalistic rules.
tried to eliminate boyhood and manhood.
claimed to be champions of tolerance, but have created a culture of
intolerance by demonizing anyone who has ideas with which they differ.not been satisfied with toleration of the 1-3% of Americans that practice
homosexuality, but instead demand full acceptance of the homosexual
lifestyle and political agenda.replaced personal responsibility with no responsibility.
As a result, the left further increased
women's perceived need for
centralized government to fill the voids they have
created.
This study demonstrates that instead of the
normal "transfer payment"
program where the government robs Peter to pay
Paul, enough women, at the
margin, have voted for the government to rob Peter
& Paul to pay Mary (after
taking out 50-67% for "bureaucratic overhead")!
[See Appendix I at the end
of this article for details on the Lott &
Kenny study)
Another recent study adds even more ammunition
to the case that the left is
explicitly exploiting women. Have you ever
wondered why the propaganda of
the left wing and their supporters in the
media seems so effective in
shaping some women's voting preference? Well, it
appears that women, on
average, know fewer facts about political issues. A
new finding which is
even more disturbing is that while women in the past
were aware when they
did not know the correct answer to a political question,
they now think they
do know the correct answer when in fact they don't.
This is the conclusion of a study about the
2000 primary campaign by the
Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University
of Pennsylvania. The study
was titled, "The Primary Campaign: What Did The
Candidates Say, What Did The
Public Learn, And Did It Matter?" [See Appendix
II at end of article for key
excerpts from that report.]
Similar surveys of factual political knowledge
were carried out in 1996 and
2000 by the researchers. During both campaigns
men were more likely to
answer questions about political issues correctly,
but women and men reacted
differently when they did not know the correct
answer. In 1996 if women did
not know the correct answers, they were more
likely to say, "I don't know."
In 2000, women were still more likely to
answer more questions incorrectly,
but were less likely to say, "I don't
know." It is difficult to have a
meaningful discussion with someone who
doesn't know that they don't know
what they think they know. Radical
feminists have no problem with this
scenario, as they do not believe in
objective reality, logic, or
rationality, which they label "phallocentric."
In presenting the study, Knight Ridder
Newspapers reported that researcher
Kathleen Hall Jamieson explained one
possible explanation is that women and
men discuss politics differently. "Men
talk with one another at work about
politics," she said. "Women don't have
that same socialization. It's a
function of how women talk about politics."
Women tended to get more answers wrong than
men, Jamieson said, regardless
of age, race, income, education, marital
status or party identification. One
theme common to either gender, she said,
is that the more people relied on
local television news for information, the
less informed they were. "Local
news watching makes you dumber," Jamieson
said.
This implies that women are more susceptible
to propaganda, misinformation,
the big lie, and political
advertising/sound-bites - technical skills at
which the left and Democratic
Party excel. It has always been perplexing
trying to understand why voters
could believe some of the economic nonsense
and outright lies put forward by
the left, but if all they are exposed to is
the television news sound bite
with no rebuttal, it makes more sense. The
local and/or network news will
usually play favorable sound bites from
Democrats, with no negative comments;
while Republican sound bites are
almost always surrounded by some type of
negative comment or suggestion. For
example, in the first Bush-Gore debate,
most network news reports and
commentators stated that Al Gore "won the
debate on points", but failed to
mentioned that at least six of his points
were either lies, exaggerations,
or misleading statements. This was later
discussed on news analysis shows,
talk radio, and newspapers. However, if a
person's only source of news was
the local television news with its national
news feed from the networks,
they would have the impression that Al Gore was
the clear winner.
As a side note, this is another reason why
government control of campaign
financing would be a disaster for the country.
Not only will it give a huge
advantage to the incumbents of either party, but
it will also make the use
of propaganda through television news broadcasts
even more controlling, as
the party out of favor with the television media
will not be able to take
their message directly to the people.
As a believer in freedom, individual rights,
property rights, and limited
constitutional government, I think it is
critical for our society to reduce
the excess insecurity being foisted onto
women by the culture and politics
of the left. We must rebuild the
traditional family values of our
Judeo-Christian culture and heritage. It is
also critical that we strengthen
our non-coercive forms of aiding the weaker
members of society, with
emphasis on the free market and faith-based programs
as the most moral and
efficient alternatives to government control over our
lives. If we do not
stop this onslaught against the traditional family, the
gender gap will
continue to grow and unfortunately lead us further down the
path to
socialism.
APPENDIX I APPENDIX I
"Did Women's Suffrage Change the Size and
Scope of Government?" by John Lott
& Lawrence Kenny.
In their study, "Did Women's Suffrage Change
the Size and Scope of
Government?" published in the December 1999 issue of
the Journal of
Political Economy, John Lott & Lawrence Kenny examined
"the growth of
government during this century as a result of giving women the
right to
vote." They used cross-sectional time-series data for 1870-1940 to
"examine
state government expenditures and revenues as well as voting by U.S.
House
and Senate state delegations." Since analysis of Federal expenditures
versus
women's suffrage was not statistically viable, they used state
government as
a surrogate. There analysis confirmed that this was a valid
surrogate. They
also analyzed the correlation between women voting and the
political makeup
of Congress over this same period.
Since the states allowed women to vote at
various times, this provided an
excellent method to look at the correlation
over a variety of time periods,
thereby eliminating temporal effects. The
first state to grant women voting
rights was Wyoming in 1869. Twenty-nine
states gave women the right to vote
prior to passage in 1920 of the 19th
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
This granted the vote to women across the
U.S. As part of their study, Lott
and Kenny analyzed voter turnout by women
and found that initially older
women (45-64 years of age) participated at the
greatest rate, and that it
took up to 30 years for women's voting
participation rate to equal that of
men. As a result, they expected any
effects for the granting of the vote to
increase over time.
The chart below provides a good overview of
the method used and the strong
correlation they found. The dates when the
vote was granted in each state is
standardized so that year 0 is the first
year in which women were allowed to
vote in that state. The values to the
left along the bottom axis show the
number of years before the vote was
granted, and the values to the right
show the years after voting commenced in
each state. The vertical axis
represents Real Per Capita State Government
Spending & Revenue. The results
are dramatic!
This chart shows that state governments grew
dramatically after women
received the right to vote. Within 11 years after
suffrage was granted in
the various states, the size of the state governments
more than doubled.
Lott & Kenny studied a variety of other variables to
determine if this
relationship was causative or if something else was going
on concurrently.
They concluded that "these differences are again quite
statistically
significant, and they strongly rule out the possibility that
higher
government spending simply arose because there was something that
correlated
with giving women the right to vote and a desire for greater
government
spending."
To determine if this same affect could be
measured at the federal level,
they then analyzed the effects of women voting
on the political direction of
the Federal Senate and Congress. They used
measures of congressional and
Senate voting behavior from "legislative vote
indexes" used in the field of
political science. These indexes differentiated
"conservative" and "liberal"
legislators based on their voting records. For
example, "conservative"
legislators between 1870-1940 "consistently opposed
increased government
regulation, ranging from the Interstate Commerce
Commission to the
minimum-wage law" as well as greater government spending.
The method of
analysis was similar to the one for state government spending,
and the
results were just as dramatic. "The two consistent results were
the
following: allowing female suffrage resulted in a more liberal tilt
in
congressional voting for both houses, and the extent of that shift
was
mirrored by the increase in turnout due to female suffrage.. In the
Senate,
suffrage changed the voting behavior by an amount equal to almost 20
percent
of the difference between Republican and Democratic senators."
So women voting led to larger government, but
the next question is why do
women prefer big government at a higher rate than
men. There have been a
variety of theories proposed over the years for the
difference in voting
preference, which Lott & Kenny reviewed against
their data. For example, in
an earlier paper they had hypothesized that the
cause of the pro-government
voting record may be the ever-increasing
employment of women by government
at all levels; however, the data did not
support this theory, and they
rejected it.
The reason(s) for this difference is not
obvious, but as it has existed over
an extended period, it appears it may be
due to a fundamental difference
between men and women. Men and women were
created equal, and they are equal
under the law, but radical feminists
notwithstanding, they are definitely
different. For example, there is
evidence in the financial and
socio-biological literature that women are more
risk averse than men. That
is, they are generally less willing to take risks
than men. It is this
difference that the authors believe may be at the root
of the difference.
Since divorced women have often not fared well
in obtaining alimony and
other support, and because women tend to have lower
incomes, Lott & Kenny
conclude, "they benefit more from various
government programs that
redistribute income to the poor, such as progressive
taxation. Hence, single
women as well as women who anticipate that they may
become single may prefer
a more progressive tax system and more wealth
transfers to low-income people
as an alternate to a share of a husband's
uncertain future income. Indeed,
we have found (in an earlier paper) that
after women have to raise children
on their own, they are more likely to
classify themselves as liberal, vote
for Democrats, and support policies such
as progressive income taxation."
Therefore, that appears to be the answer. Some
women have used the vote to
reduce their financial risks in life through use
of government power. In
other words, we are robbing Peter & Paul to pay
Mary.
APPENDIX II
Excerpts from: "The Primary Campaign: What Did
The Candidates Say, What Did
The Public Learn, And Did It Matter?" published
by The Annenberg Public
Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania
(March 2000).
"Since 1980, women have voted either at the
same or at a higher rate than
men. Why then do scholars consistently find
that women answer fewer
questions correctly about political affairs than do
men? This finding is
especially perplexing given that the status of women has
changed
substantially in the last fifty years. Educational attainment is
now
comparable between the sexes. There is greater female presence in the
labor
force. And, the number of women seeking political office has
risen.
Nevertheless, gender differences in political knowledge persist.
To ascertain if sex differences in political
knowledge are present in the
2000 presidential primary campaign period, a
political knowledge scale was
composed of thirteen knowledge items that asked
adults about the issue
positions and backgrounds of Gore, Bradley, McCain and
Bush. Using a
national sample of adults interviewed between December 14, 1999
and March
13, 2000, statistical analyses were performed to determine the
variables
that predict political knowledge. Three outcomes were analyzed: (1)
getting
an item correct, (2) answering the question but selecting an
incorrect
answer, or (3) stating that one does not know an answer.
Prior research by Kenski and Jamieson (in
press) of voters in the 1996
general election suggested that while there were
sex differences in getting
items correct and stating that one did not know an
answer, there were no
significant gender differences in selecting an
incorrect answer. Men were
more likely to get answers correct, and women were
more likely to say that
they did not know an answer to a question. In the
2000 presidential
campaign, women were also more likely to answer questions
incorrectly. These
gender differences did not disappear when several
sociodemographic
variables, such as age, race, education, income, marital
status, party
identification, media exposure, etc., were controlled for.
The perplexing finding that women do not
perform as well as men on political
knowledge still persists in the year
2000. Prior research on the 1996
general election indicated that while men
got political knowledge items
correct more often that women and women said
that they did not know the
answer more often than men, there were no gender
differences in selecting
the incorrect answer. In the 2000 presidential
primary, however, women are
more likely to select the incorrect answer."
Samuel Silver, a board member of Toward
Tradition, writes from Greenville,
Mississippi.
Crying Over Sept. 11
Roughly two in 10 Americans (21%) say they have cried in the last two weeks as a direct result of the events of Sept. 11. Women are significantly more likely than men to say they have cried (29% to 13%). [Mar. 8-9, 2002]