the gender gap lives

The Gender Gap Lives
Women made a difference in key races, but lost ground in Congress

By Eleanor Smeal

Don't believe anything you might have read to the contrary: The gender gap was alive and well in the 2010 midterm elections.

That gap—the measurable difference between the way women and men vote—showed clearly in 25 of 26 U.S. Senate races and 17 of 18 gubernatorial races for which exit polls were conducted. (There were no exit polls for House districts or state legislatures.) And the general pattern remains the same as it has since the 1980s: Women tend to favor Democratic candidates more than men do, while men favor Republicans.

"Typically, we see gender gaps in about two-thirds of all statewide races," says Susan J. Carroll, senior scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP) at Rutgers University in New Jersey, "but this year we saw gender gaps in all but a couple of contests."

In fact, the gap was so pronounced that without women's votes Democrats would not have retained a majority in the Senate. In three key races—Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D) versus Sharron Angle (R) in Nevada; Sen. Michael Bennet (D) versus Kenneth Buck (R) in Colorado; and Sen. Patty Murray (D) versus Dino Rossi (R) in Washington—the Democrats would have been defeated if men alone had cast votes (see chart, left).

The size of the gender gap varied widely in races, from as little as 4 percent to a startling 19 percent in the Hawaii governor's race, where former Democratic Rep. Neil Abercrombie was elected with 68 percent of women's votes and just 49 percent of men's. Even the Republican strategy of nominating more women candidates could not close the gap: Losing GOP candidates Christine O'Donnell (Delaware), Sharron Angle (Nevada), Linda McMahon (Connecticut) and Carly Fiorina (California) all had solid majorities of women voting against them. Of the non-incumbent Republican women senatorial candidates, only Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire had a majority of women voters on her side—and she won.

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http://www.msmagazine.com/winter2011/gendergap.asp