





































What do Pennsylvania Voters Think about Gender and Women's Representation?


COMMONWEALTH, Volume 21, Issue 1 (2021). © 2021 The Pennsylvania Political Science Association.  
ISSN 2469-7672 (online). http://dx.doi.org/10.15367/com.v21i1.286. All rights reserved.

What Do Pennsylvania Voters Think about 
Gender and Women’s Representation?

What We Learned from 2016 and 2018 Exit Polls

SARAH NIEBLER
Dickinson College

A. LANETHEA MATHEWS-SCHULTZ
Muhlenberg College

Despite ongoing interest in the role of gender in American elections, highlighted 
most recently by Hillary Clinton’s historic bid for the presidency in 2016 and 
the 2018 “Year of the Woman” elections, recent studies have shown that gen-
der alone is not enough to explain voter behavior. This is especially true in 
an increasingly ideologically polarized landscape in which party and ideology 
retain significant explanatory power regarding electoral outcomes. The saliency 
of gender identity and gender issues may also vary across time and context. 
Moreover, voters may not have full information about the underrepresentation 
of women or of the consequences of gender imbalances in elective institutions, 
raising uncertainty about whether women’s representation in politics matters to 
voters. In this article, using data from a unique exit poll, we examine the extent 
to which knowledge about women’s representation and perceptions about gen-
der and women’s issues mattered to Pennsylvanians’ vote choice in the 2016 and 
2018 elections. We find that neither gender nor party alone can explain men’s 
and women’s political behavior, but rather that gender and party interact in 
complex ways. Although party continues to be the best predictor of vote choice, 
gender matters to how voters understand and explain women’s underrepre-
sentation in politics—a finding that has important implications for furthering 
gender equality in politics in the future.



8 Sarah niebler anD a. lanethea mathewS-SChultz

While Hillary Clinton’s historic presidential run in 2016 reignited 
scholarly interest in the role of women in American politics, Don-
ald Trump’s unanticipated victory (following a campaign marked 

by misogyny and boasts about sexually harassing women) may have done 
more to catalyze activism among women seeking a voice in the political arena. 
The Women’s March on January 21, 2017, was the largest coordinated protest 
in U.S. history and one of the largest in world history (Meyer and Tarrow 2018; 
Berry and Chenoweth 2018). The newfound sense of solidarity among women 
evident in the Women’s March was further fueled by the #MeToo movement 
later that year; both are at least partially responsible for the emergence of the 
2018 Year of the Woman elections in which a record number of women ran 
for and won elective office. The 2018 Year of the Woman shares with 1992—
the first Year of the Woman in which record numbers of women entered the 
U.S. Congress—a context marked by eerily similar high-profile hearings into 
alleged sexual misconduct on the part of Supreme Court nominees.

The confluence of these events in 2016 and 2018 drew collective attention 
to the underrepresentation of women and to potential links between gender, 
women’s issues, and party. Clinton, for example, centered her identity as a 
mother and grandmother within a campaign strategy that made frequent ref-
erences to families and children, and described herself as a woman embark-
ing on a historic campaign to become the first female president of the United 
States (Chozick and Martin 2015; Nichols 2017). Anti-Trump narratives were 
common and not limited to Democrats in 2018, as would be expected during 
any midterm election from the party not in power. These messages were espe-
cially prominent among female Democratic candidates, of whom more than 
half centered their campaigns around women’s issues including reproductive 
health and the end of sexual harassment and gender violence (often directly 
referencing #MeToo and the Kavanaugh hearings). News stories about female 
candidates—covering women as women—dominated print and social media 
throughout the campaigns, leading one Republican strategist to anticipate “a 
female revolution” at the voting booth (Kapur and McCormick 2018). Voters 
echoed this sentiment in national exit polls on Election Day with more than 
50% saying that electing women to office is important and that sexual harass-
ment is a serious problem facing our nation (CNN 2018).

Despite the fact that gender was a prominent frame in political discourse 
in 2016 and 2018, past research suggests that it might not have made much of 
a difference to voters’ perceptions or to their votes. Hayes and Lawless (2016) 
show, for example, that despite the persistence of notions that gender matters 
to elections (manifest as sexism on the campaign trail or in voters’ gender bias 
toward candidates), candidates, campaigns, and voters generally divide along 



What Do Pennsylvania Voters Think about Gender and Women’s Representation? 9

the lines of party. Vote choice and perceptions of candidates and their cam-
paigns are shaped more by long-standing partisan attachments than by any 
kind of gender affinity. At first glance, exit poll data seems to confirm the sig-
nificance of party. While Trump’s unexpected victory was born of some cross-
party voting by Democratic voters in key states (including Pennsylvania), 89% 
of Democrats voted for Clinton on Election Day while 88% of Republicans 
voted for Trump; this is compared to 2012 when 92% of Democratic voters 
voted for Obama and 93% of Republican voters voted for Romney (CNN 
2012; CNN 2016). In the 2018 midterm elections, 95% of Democrats voted for 
a Democratic House candidate; 94% of Republicans voted for a Republican 
House candidate.

In this article we examine questions about the relationship between party 
identification and gender and how those two variables affect voters’ party 
identification, vote choices, positions on gender-related issues, and their 
understanding and knowledge about women’s underrepresentation in elec-
toral politics in the United States. Specifically, we ask: Did gender transcend 
party in 2016 and 2018? Did voters consider the historic nature of Clinton’s 
candidacy? How did Trump’s rhetoric about women shape political behavior 
in 2016? How did the Year of the Woman elections in 2018 affect voters’ per-
ceptions about the political arena, women’s representation, and the signifi-
cance of gender-related issues?

Drawing on data from unique exit polls conducted in 2016 and 2018 in 
three Pennsylvania counties (Allegheny, Cumberland, and Lehigh), we find 
that gender impacted voters’ party identification and vote choice, but in dif-
ferent ways between the two years. We also find some evidence for a gender- 
affinity effect as Republican women were more likely to support Hillary 
Clinton in 2016 than would have been expected considering only party or 
gender. Additionally, we find that neither gender nor party alone is enough to 
explain how women (and men) understand women’s underrepresentation in 
politics or how they viewed the political significance of Trump’s behavior 
toward women or the 2018 Year of the Woman. Rather, gender and party inter-
act in complex ways. In particular, partisan identification, not gender identity, 
seems to best explain how Pennsylvania voters considered Trump’s comments 
about women and the Kavanaugh nomination, and partisanship also shapes 
how voters explain women’s underrepresentation in office. This finding lends 
support to the notion that voters, both men and women, evaluate candidates 
primarily through the lens of party. Gender does have an independent effect, 
however, when it comes to how men and women interpret the #MeToo move-
ment and how they understand explanations for women’s underrepresenta-
tion in politics. Even taking into account political party identification, female 



10 Sarah niebler anD a. lanethea mathewS-SChultz

voters were more likely than male voters to suggest that overt sexism and lack 
of party support are responsible for women’s underrepresentation.

Linking the Gender Gap to Women’s Representation

Among the most notable empirical trends in studies of gender and politi-
cal behavior is the gender gap in party and voting; that is, women are more 
likely than men to align with the Democratic party and to vote for Demo-
cratic candidates as compared to their male counterparts. The gender gap was 
very much apparent in 2016 and 2018. Women supported Clinton over Trump 
54% to 42%—at 12%, it is the largest presidential gender gap in voting since 
1996 (the average gender gap between 1980 and 2016 was only 8%) (Tyson 
and Maniam 2016). Among men Clinton received the lowest support of any 
Democratic candidate since 1992, gaining only 41% of their votes (Presidential 
Gender Watch 2017). In 2018 59% of women voted for the Democratic House 
candidate; in the 2014 midterm elections, this figure was only 51%. Men split 
their votes more evenly among Democrats and Republicans in 2018: 47% of 
men voted for a House Democrat compared to 51% who voted for a House 
Republican.

If persistent, the gender gap is quickly complicated upon deeper analysis. 
Frasure-Yokley (2018) points out, for example, that the gender gap obscures 
important differences and sources of heterogeneity in perceptions and atti-
tudes among women (see also Cassese and Barnes 2019). Particularly relevant, 
with few exceptions (including 1992 and 1996), white women have consis-
tently supported Republican presidential candidates. More than one-half of 
white women supported Trump in 2016, suggesting that the gender gap in 
2016 was driven by race and gender. While only 43% of white women voted 
for Clinton, 94% of black women did; among men, 82% of black men voted for 
Clinton, compared to 31% of white men (Philpot 2018).

This is not to suggest that gender is irrelevant to politics, but rather that 
its explanatory power does not result from a simple “gender-affinity effect.” 
Rather, gender is best understood in interaction with other factors, especially 
party and gender stereotypes. For example, gender stereotypes matter to the 
ways that voters evaluate candidates and think about issues. Sanbonmatsu 
(2002) uses gender schema theory to show that many voters are predisposed 
to support female over male candidates (or vice versa) and that this preference 
can affect voters’ decisions at the polls. Specifically, Sanbonmatsu finds that 
women are more likely than men to have a baseline preference for female can-
didates. For similar reasons gender stereotypes may shape the ways that voters 



What Do Pennsylvania Voters Think about Gender and Women’s Representation? 11

infer candidates’ ideological orientations (Koch 2000). Especially important 
is the extent to which partisanship provides cues to help organize voters’ per-
ceptions of candidates and their understanding and prioritization of issues. 
Democrats and Republicans hold different stereotypes about men and women, 
especially when it comes to candidates’ and officeholders’ issue competencies, 
leading to differential effects of gender within party (Sanbonmatsu and Dolan 
2009). Women, regardless of party identification, are more supportive of an 
activist government, for example, and more likely to favor more liberal policy 
positions on a range of issues including the use of force, social policy, and the 
environment, and they are more likely to rank these issues differently in terms 
of salience when compared to men (Lizotte 2014; Ondercin 2017). Voters may 
not always agree with their party on every issue and there may be important 
differences between men and women on issue positions within their party 
(Lizotte 2014).

Whether or not gender gaps in perceptions, candidate evaluation, and 
issue positions hurt or help particular kinds of candidates is unclear. Overt 
sexism does not appear to directly shape voters’ choices (Hayes and Lawless 
2016).1 Some research suggests that gender-based stereotypes may reduce the 
ideological distance between Republican female candidates and voters; other 
research suggests that voters’ gender stereotypes put Republican female can-
didates at a disadvantage (Sanbonmatsu and Dolan 2009; Hayes 2011; see also 
King and Matland 2003). Brians (2005) finds that Republican female voters 
are more willing to cross party lines to vote for female candidates, but that 
Democratic female voters are reluctant to do the same. Other studies find 
no consistent pattern between gender stereotypes and vote choice given the 
strength of party (Dolan 2014; Hayes and Lawless 2016). This is especially 
the case in an increasingly polarized political environment with record high 
levels of party voting among lawmakers and increased partisanship among 
the engaged public (Abramowitz 2012). Media coverage of national elections 
sharpens partisan cues, and candidate campaigns orient their messages and 
issue agendas to reinforce partisanship. In turn, the impact of partisanship on 
the public’s evaluation of candidates has grown to its highest level in decades 
(Jacobson 2006).

In this kind of electoral environment, Ondercin (2017) argues, the gender 
gap is a consequence of voters’ shifting partisanship in ways that are directly 
tied to gendered social identities. Given that voters select the party that best 
represents their social identities, Ondercin suggests, party realignments and 
shifts in the composition of men and women in elective office send signals to 
voters about which party best represents them. One of the most notable shifts 



12 Sarah niebler anD a. lanethea mathewS-SChultz

is the increasing numbers of women who have been elected to office in the 
Democratic party (and a corresponding decrease in the numbers of women 
elected in the Republican party). The gender gap, then, is a consequence of 
changes in men’s and women’s macropartisanship in response to the gen-
der makeup of congressional delegations and to the symbolic images of each 
party.

Previous research suggests that in 1992, the first Year of the Woman, 
gender was more relevant to political behavior than it had been in previous, 
and possibly subsequent, elections (K. Dolan 2004; Sanbonmatsu 2003). San-
bonmatsu (2003) argues, for example, that the Anita Hill testimony during 
the Clarence Thomas hearings in 1991 suggested a link between the descrip-
tive and substantive representation of women, providing an issue context 
favorable for female candidates and heightening voters’ sense of urgency in 
increasing women’s presence in Congress. Historic numbers of female can-
didates in the 1992 congressional elections—when gender issues were par-
ticularly salient, female candidates were exceptionally competitive running 
as women, and the media devoted significant time to covering both—were 
linked to increased political involvement among women (Campbell and 
Wolbrecht 2006; K. Dolan 1998, 2004; Sapiro and Conover 1997; see also 
Koch 1997) and to increased support for electing women to office (Sanbon-
matsu 2003).

Kathleen Dolan’s research (1998, 2004) notably shows that gender mat-
ters to the extent that female voters prefer female candidates and are more 
likely to consider gender-related issues when voting compared to men. But 
electoral environment is key: gender matters in certain kinds of information 
environments in which gender-related issues are especially salient. Similarly, 
although they argue the declining novelty of women as candidates coupled 
with increased partisan polarization makes sex and gender largely irrelevant 
to elections, Hayes and Lawless concede that in some circumstances, such as 
when “charges of sexism arise” or “when campaigns are explicitly gendered,” 
gender “can work its way into a campaign” (2016, 9). It is in these cases, they 
suggest, that gender becomes relevant, newsworthy, and linked to election out-
comes. Put differently, rather than asking does gender matter?, past research 
suggests a more appropriate question is when does gender matter? This article 
examines the extent to which gender was especially salient in 2016 and 2018 
in interaction with, and potentially in ways that transcended, political party 
in shaping voters’ perceptions and explanation of women’s underrepresenta-
tion, their attitudes toward gender-related issues, and their voting decisions 
on Election Day.



What Do Pennsylvania Voters Think about Gender and Women’s Representation? 13

Research Design and Methods

On Election Day 2016, students from Dickinson and Muhlenberg Colleges 
conducted exit polls in Cumberland and Lehigh Counties. In 2018 Dickinson 
and Muhlenberg were joined by students from Chatham University and the 
University of Pittsburgh who administered exit polls in Allegheny County. 
Like most exit polls, the questionnaires in 2016 and 2018 contained questions 
about vote choice, policy positions, and demographics. Particularly relevant 
to this article were questions about salient gender and women’s issues. In 
2016, we asked voters whether treatment of women is a legitimate campaign 
issue; we also asked voters about their perceptions of Trump’s comments 
on the Access Hollywood tape. In 2018, we asked voters about their views of 
the #MeToo movement and the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. 
Supreme Court. Additionally, in 2018 we asked respondents to estimate the 
percentage of women in both the U.S. Congress and the Pennsylvania state 
legislature since Sanbonmatsu (2003) finds that knowledge about women’s 
representation is related to support for electing women to office. Follow-
ing Dolan and Hansen (2018) we also asked 2016 and 2018 voters whether 
they explained women’s underrepresentation as a consequence of voter bias, 
individual variables (such as family status or career path), or systemic-level 
variables (including insufficient support from political parties and political 
elites).2

Our Pennsylvania exit polls are not meant to represent all Pennsylvania 
voters (and certainly not all voters nationally). Rather, these exit polls allow 
us to examine relationships among multiple variables. In other words, while 
we would not want to make any claims about how many Democrats and 
Republicans are actually in Lehigh and Cumberland Counties (in 2016 and 
2018) and Allegheny County (in 2018) using just exit poll data, we are confi-
dent in our ability to talk about relationships among variables. For instance, 
our data allow us to understand how gender and party may interact to affect 
vote choice, and they provide insight into voters’ perceptions of the causes for 
women’s underrepresentation in the American political system.

In 2016, student pollsters talked to 482 voters in Cumberland County and 
252 voters in Lehigh County, for a total of 734 voters overall. In 2018, a total of 
1,307 participants responded to the survey—481 from Allegheny County, 455 
from Cumberland County, and 371 from Lehigh County. In both years of the 
survey, because our students talked to a disproportionate number of people 
who voted for Democrats, we weighted the exit poll data. In 2016, we weighted 
to the presidential vote totals in each county and in 2018 we weighted to the 
Senate vote totals in each county.3



14 Sarah niebler anD a. lanethea mathewS-SChultz

Results

We first examine the relationship between gender and party identification 
since research has identified a significant gender gap in men’s and women’s 
propensity to identify with the two major political parties. We also include 
race of respondent since we know that non-white voters are more likely than 
white voters to identify as Democrats than as Republicans. Table 1 illustrates 
these results. In the 2016 exit poll, 34% of our total respondents identified as 
Democrats, 48% as Republicans, and 18% as Independents. When we break 
this down by gender and race, we see that both non-white women and non-
white men are more likely to identify with the Democratic Party than their 
white counterparts. Of non-white women respondents, 55% indicated they 
were Democrats while just 37% of white women said the same (chi-square = 
5.312, p = .07). Of non-white men, 60% said they were Democrats while just 
24% of white men replied in the same way (chi-square = 24.503, p < .001). 
When we look at the gender gap within racial groups, we find evidence for 
a gender gap between men and women, but only among white respondents 
(chi-square = 13.515, p = .001).

Compared to the 2016 exit poll, the 2018 exit poll had a larger percentage 
of Democratic respondents. This is due, in part, to our addition of Allegh-
eny County (containing the city of Pittsburgh) to the survey, but even within 
Cumberland and Lehigh Counties, the percentage of Democratic respondents 
increased between 2016 and 2018. Table 2 shows the relationship between 
party identification, gender, and race among our 2018 exit poll respondents. 
There are no statistically significant differences between women and men, nor 
between white and non-white respondents with respect to party identification 
in this non-representative sample. The counties in which we surveyed (with 

table 1. Party identification of exit Poll respondents in 2016, by race and Gender

2016
all 
respondents

white 
women 
respondents

white men 
respondents

non-white 
women 
respondents

non-white  
men 
respondents

Democrats 34% 37%*† 24%*† 55%† 60%†

Republicans 48% 45%*† 57%*† 29%† 23%†

Unaffiliated 
or Third-Party

18% 18% 19% 17% 18%

 Total 100%
(N = 682)

100%
(N = 328)

100%
(N = 272)

101%
(N = 42)

101%
(N = 40)

* Gender difference (within race) is statistically significant (p < .10).

† Racial difference (within gender) is statistically significant (p < .10).



What Do Pennsylvania Voters Think about Gender and Women’s Representation? 15

the exception of Cumberland County) are more Democratic than the state as 
a whole. Further, in 2018, possibly due to an “enthusiasm gap” between Demo-
cratic and Republican voters, especially in mostly white suburban districts 
(Cohn 2018), Democrats were more likely to talk with our student pollsters 
than were Republican voters in the precincts we surveyed. Especially in 2018, 
white Democrats were more likely to talk with our students than were white 
Republican voters. 

We next examine the relationship among party identification, race, and 
gender and vote choice of our exit poll respondents in 2016 and 2018. Given 
the nature of American politics, we expect that party identification will have 
a significant effect on vote choice across the board. We also include gender, 
race, age, and education as controls in our models.4 Our key variable of inter-
est in this analysis, however, is a binary variable for GOP women (coded 1 if 
respondent was both a Republican and a woman). If large numbers of Repub-
lican women broke with their party and voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, 
that could provide some evidence of a gender-affinity effect. In 2018, both the 
Democratic and Republican Senate candidates were men (Bob Casey-D and 
Lou Barletta-R), so if Republican women broke with their party to support 
Casey, that may point to the increased saliency of women’s issues, #MeToo, 
the Women’s March, and heightened campaign and media attention to gender. 
With respect to U.S. House races, in 2016 all exit poll respondents were in U.S. 
House districts that were contested only by men in the general election. In 
2018, exit poll respondents living in Lehigh County were in District 7 in which 
Susan Wild (D) competed against Marty Nothstein (R). All other 2018 exit 
poll respondents were in House districts in which two men competed against 
one another. Thus we analyze vote choice in the 2018 U.S. House elections in 
Lehigh County separately from the other two counties.

table 2. Party identification of exit Poll respondents in 2018, by race and Gender

2018
all 
respondents

white 
women 
respondents

white men 
respondents

non-white 
women 
respondents

non-white  
men 
respondents

Democrats 66% 65% 66% 68% 68%

Republicans 23% 22% 24% 23% 23%

Unaffiliated 
or Third-Party

12% 14% 11% 10% 10%

 Total 101%
(N = 1,119)

101%
(N = 508)

101%
(N = 395)

101%
(N = 132)

101%
(N = 84)

Note: There are no gender differences (within race) and no racial differences (within gender) that are 
statistically significant (p < .10).



16 Sarah niebler anD a. lanethea mathewS-SChultz

Table 3 shows the results of five multivariate logistic regressions predict-
ing when exit poll respondents indicated voting for the Democratic candidate 
across various races. In the first two columns, we see results for elections in 
2016; party identification works as we expect with Republican respondents 
being less likely to report having voted for Clinton and for the Democratic 
House candidate in their district. Race also works as expected, with white vot-
ers being less likely to vote for Democrats. Our key independent variable, GOP 
women, is also significant, but only when the candidate in the race (Clinton) 

table 3. effect of race, Gender, and Partisanship on Vote Choice, 2016 & 2018

Voted for 
Clinton (D)  
in 2016

Voted for 
Democratic 
u.S. house 
Candidate  
in 2016

Voted for 
Casey (D)  
in 2018

Voted for 
Democratic 
u.S. house 
Candidate 
in 2018 
(allegheny and 
Cumberland 
County 
respondents)

Voted for 
Female 
Democratic 
u.S. house 
Candidate  
in 2018 
(lehigh 
County 
respondents)

Party ID –2.997***
(0.255)

–2.772***
(0.237)

–0.190
(0.108)

–0.309*
(0.133)

0.004
(0.196)

Women 0.194
(0.306)

0.264
(0.298)

0.619***
(0.146)

0.645***
(0.178)

0.553*
(0.274)

GOP 
Women

1.169*
(0.474)

0.495
(0.492)

0.227
(0.286)

0.505
(0.349)

–0.400
(0.522)

White –1.146**
(0.398)

–1.291**
(0.406)

–1.819***
(0.211)

–2.013***
(0.270)

–1.699***
(0.393)

Age 0.158
(0.134)

–0.084
(0.136)

–0.231***
(0.062)

–0.252**
(0.075)

0.155
(0.122)

Education –0.001
(0.002)

–0.001
(0.002)

0.055
(0.067)

0.024
(0.081)

0.241
(0.131)

Constant 6.205***
(0.711)

6.444***
(0.721)

2.038***
(0.367)

2.564***
(0.445)

0.229
(0.733)

R2 0.543 0.547 0.097 0.114 0.085

N 677 669 1,081 763 312

Dependent variable is binary, coded 1 if respondent answered affirmatively to the question.

Logistic regression coefficients are provided, with standard deviations in parentheses.

*p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001 

Note: Exit poll respondents living in Lehigh County were all in U.S. House District 7, in which Susan 
Wild (D) competed against Marty Nothstein (R) in 2018. In 2016, all exit poll respondents were in U.S. 
House districts that featured male candidates. In 2018, all exit poll respondents in Allegheny and Cum-
berland Counties were in House districts contested only by men.



What Do Pennsylvania Voters Think about Gender and Women’s Representation? 17

is a woman and not when the candidate is a man (all Democratic U.S. House 
candidates in 2016). As indicated earlier, this provides some evidence for a 
gender-affinity effect.5

The results of the 2018 elections, also presented in Table 3, show more 
complicated results. Despite the polarized nature of American politics, party 
identification is not consistently significant across all vote choice results. In 
2018 Republicans reported voting for Democrats at much higher rates than 
they did in 2016.6 Additionally, while it is true that Casey’s support across the 
state was higher than Clinton’s in 2016 (55.7% to 47.6%), upwards of 70% of all 
our respondents indicated they voted for Casey. We think this could be due, 
at least in part, to the enthusiasm gap and the proclivity of people who vote 
for Democrats to respond to exit polls, especially those administered by col-
lege students. Looking at the remainder of the results for the 2018 elections, 
we see that gender and race both have statistically significant effects across 
both the Senate and House elections. Women were more likely than men to 
vote for Democratic candidates as were non-white voters compared to white 
voters. We do not see any evidence for a gender-affinity effect in 2018 as nei-
ther women overall, nor Republican women, were more likely to support the 
Democrat in Lehigh County (where the Democratic candidate was a woman) 
than in Allegheny and Cumberland Counties (where all the Democratic can-
didates in the U.S. House races were men).

Our next set of analyses considers the degree to which women and men, 
and Democrats and Republicans, viewed the issues surrounding the 2016 
and 2018 campaigns differently. In 2016, we included questions on the exit 
poll centered on the comments Trump made about women in the Access Hol-
lywood tape; in 2018, questions focused on the #MeToo movement and the 
nomination of Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court. Figure 1 
illustrates the effects of gender and partisanship on the 2016 questions while 
Figure 2 shows the same bivariate effects for the 2018 questions. In both fig-
ures, the effect of party identification appears to dwarf any effect based on 
gender of the respondent, with Democrats in 2016 being more likely than 
Republicans to say that how candidates treat women is a legitimate campaign 
issue and that Trump’s Access Hollywood comments affected their decision 
about whom to vote for in the presidential election. Republicans were more 
likely than Democrats to label the Access Hollywood comments as “typical 
locker-room talk by men.” In 2018, Democrats were more likely than Repub-
licans to both have a favorable view of the #MeToo movement overall and 
say that it had a positive impact on them personally. Republicans were much 
more likely than were Democrats, however, to support the nomination of Brett 
Kavanaugh to the United States Supreme Court.



18 Sarah niebler anD a. lanethea mathewS-SChultz

Table 4 shows the results of multivariate analyses examining the impact 
of party identification and gender on the above questions, while also control-
ling for age and race. The effect of party identification was confirmed by the 
multivariate models, but beyond party identification, gender was significant 
in the two models dealing with questions about the #MeToo movement. In 
both instances, women were more likely than men to say that they had a more 
favorable view of the #MeToo movement and that it affected them positively 
on a personal level.

Figure 1. Effect of Gender and Partisanship on Candidates’ Treatment of Women and Access 
Hollywood Tape Comments. (Source: Authors.)

Figure 2. Effect of Gender and Partisanship on #MeToo Movement and Kavanaugh’s 
Nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. (Source: Authors.)



What Do Pennsylvania Voters Think about Gender and Women’s Representation? 19

Next, before we consider voters’ views of why women are underrepre-
sented in electoral politics, we want to examine whether individuals actually 
know the extent to which women are underrepresented, especially in Pennsyl-
vania’s U.S. House delegation. As mentioned earlier, prior to 2018 Pennsylva-
nia’s congressional delegation included no women. On the 2018 exit poll, we 
asked voters to indicate “how many of Pennsylvania’s 18 House of Representa-
tives members” are women. Of the 1,034 respondents who provided an answer 
to the question, just 84 (8%) provided the correct response. Table 5 considers 
the extent to which party identification and gender explain a voter’s correct 
or incorrect response to this question, while again controlling for age, educa-
tion, and race. As shown, respondents’ party identification was significant 
while gender was not. Republicans were less likely than Democrats to know 
that zero members of Pennsylvania’s congressional delegation were women—a 
reflection, perhaps, of the centrality of women’s representation to campaigns 
in 2018, nearly all of which were Democratic campaigns.7

We find party to be significantly related to voters’ knowledge about wom-
en’s underrepresentation, but we are also curious as to how it and gender affect 
how voters explain women’s underrepresentation. Our exit polls in both 2016 

table 4. effect of Partisanship and Gender on trump’s Comments about women (2016) 
and Views of #metoo and Kavanaugh’s nomination (2018)

legitimate 
issue

locker-room 
talk

Comments 
impacted 
Vote

Favorable 
View of 
#metoo

Positive 
Personal 
effect of 
#metoo

Support 
Kavanaugh 
nomination

Party ID –1.175***
(0.106)

1.316***
(0.127)

–0.858***
(0.101)

–1.344***
(0.092)

–1.083***
(0.101)

2.385***
(0.136)

Female 0.159
(0.178)

0.129
(0.187)

0.035
(0.180)

0.349*
(0.160)

0.309*
(0.134)

–0.167
(0.222)

Age –0.009
(0.093)

–0.002
(0.098)

–0.025
(0.093)

0.015
(0.073)

0.028
(0.060)

0.391***
(0.101)

White 0.095
(0.281)

0.263
(0.329)

–0.153
(0.260)

–0.157
(0.208)

–0.072
(0.167)

0.658*
(0.291)

Constant 2.532***
(0.392)

–4.049***
(0.489)

1.212**
(0.364)

3.212***
(0.293)

1.036***
(0.241)

–7.277***
(0.517)

R2 0.169 0.180 0.100 0.210 0.108 0.512

N 665 664 664 1,085 1,094 1,102

Dependent variable is binary, coded 1 if respondent answered affirmatively to the question.

Logistic regression coefficients are provided, with standard deviations in parentheses.

*p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001



20 Sarah niebler anD a. lanethea mathewS-SChultz

and 2018 included a series of questions measuring respondents’ perceptions 
about women’s underrepresentation, allowing us to examine these relation-
ships. We asked voters to select from the following six reasons that might 
explain women’s low levels of representation:

• Women are held to higher standards than are men.
• Many Americans aren’t ready to elect a woman to higher office.
• Women who are active in politics get less support from party 

leaders.
• Few women have the experience to run for office.
• Family responsibilities don’t leave time for politics.
• Women aren’t tough enough for politics.

Figures 3 and 4 illustrate the overall percentage of respondents who 
selected each reason and also breaks down the responses by gender and party 
identification. In general, reasons summarized in Figure 3 can be under-
stood as system-level causes; those included in Figure 4 are more individ-
ual-level causes. Just as with the analyses above, it appears as though party 

table 5. Predictors of Correct response to “approximately how many of 
Pennsylvania’s 18 house of representatives members do you think are 
women?”

Party Identification –0.572**
(0.175)

Women –0.246
(0.231)

Education 0.094
(0.119)

Age 0.378***
(0.108)

White –0.088
(0.285)

Constant –2.594***
(0.595)

R2 0.044

N 975

Dependent variable is binary, coded 1 if respondent answered the question correctly.

Logistic regression coefficients are provided, with standard deviations in parentheses.

*p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001



What Do Pennsylvania Voters Think about Gender and Women’s Representation? 21

identification is the dominant factor affecting how people understand levels 
of women’s underrepresentation in American electoral politics. Democrats are 
more likely than Republicans to select system-level reasons shown in Figure 
3, suggesting that women receive less support from party leaders and face 
discriminatory barriers. Republicans, in contrast, are more likely than Demo-
crats to select the three reasons shown in Figure 4 identifying factors related 
to individuals (what Dolan and Hansen call supply-level variables [2018]), 
such as family status and career paths.

Figure 3. Reasons Why More Women Do Not Hold Elected Office in the United States Overall, 
and by Gender and Party Identification. (Source: Authors.)

Figure 4. Reasons Why More Women Do Not Hold Elected Office in the United States Overall, 
and by Gender and Party Identification. (Source: Authors.)



22 Sarah niebler anD a. lanethea mathewS-SChultz

We do not simply want to rely on the descriptive data, however, so we ran 
six logistic regressions where the dependent variable in each is coded as one 
if the respondent chose the listed reason.8 Again, our primary variables of 
interest are party identification and gender, but we also controlled for age and 
race.9 Table 6 shows the results of each regression.

When examining the multivariate results, we see that party identifica-
tion holds up as a significant predictor of all reasons offered by respondents. 
After controlling for party identification, only two reasons showed a sig-
nificant gender effect; women were more likely than were men to say that 
women are held to higher standards and that women get less support from 
party leaders. Finally, since the questions about women’s underrepresenta-
tion in politics were included in both the 2016 and 2018 exit polls, we are 
able to examine year effects. Notably, we find that respondents in 2018 were 
more likely than respondents in 2016 to say that women get less support 
from party leaders, but they were less likely to say that women aren’t tough 
enough for politics.

table 6. effect of Partisanship and Gender on Stated reasons why more women Don’t 
hold elected Office in the united States

higher 
Standards

americans 
aren’t 
ready

less 
Support

less 
experience

Family 
responsibilities

aren’t 
tough 
enough

Party ID –0.957***
(0.084)

–0.551***
(0.064)

–0.210**
(0.063)

0.510***
(0.093)

0.423***
(0.096)

0.485*
(0.230)

Women 0.523***
(0.115)

0.112
(0.101)

0.274**
(0.100)

–0.129
(0.156)

0.056
(0.161)

–0.117
(0.368)

Age 0.060
(0.053)

0.141**
(0.048)

–0.149**
(0.047)

0.091
(0.075)

0.110
(0.077)

–0.000
(0.182)

White 0.170
(0.149)

–0.038
(0.134)

–0.084
(0.133)

0.199
(0.229)

0.344
(0.246)

0.076
(0.561)

2018 0.013
(0.126)

0.232*
(0.109)

0.329**
(0.108)

0.242
(0.166)

0.044
(0.168)

–0.742
(0.394)

Constant 0.035
(0.253)

0.166
(0.219)

0.080
(0.218)

–3.531***
(0.364)

–3.579***
(0.381)

–4.607***
(0.849)

R2 0.096 0.044 0.024 0.031 0.025 0.039

N 1,728 1,728 1,728 1,728 1,725 1,726

Dependent variable is binary, coded 1 if respondent selected the reason and zero otherwise.

Logistic regression coefficients are provided, with standard deviations in parentheses.

*p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001



What Do Pennsylvania Voters Think about Gender and Women’s Representation? 23

Discussion and Conclusion

Taken collectively, the results of Pennsylvania exit polls conducted in 2016 
and 2018 suggest that party, more than gender or women’s issues per se, 
shaped voters’ views and votes on Election Day. In this respect, what is most 
remarkable about the 2016 and 2018 elections might be how little changed. We 
find that gender mattered in both the 2016 and 2018 elections, but in different 
ways each year. In 2016 women were more likely than men to say they were 
Democrats, but there was no effect of gender above and beyond party identi-
fication when it came to vote choice in either the presidential or U.S. House 
elections. In 2018, however, we did not see any effect of gender on whether 
voters consider themselves Democrats or Republicans, but we saw gender play 
a role in vote choice, as women were more likely than men to report voting for 
Democratic Senate candidate Bob Casey as well as for U.S. House Democrats, 
regardless of candidate sex.

Even in electoral environments in which gender-related issues and iden-
tities were especially salient, as they were in 2016 and 2018, party affected 
how voters evaluated the actions of political candidates and considered the 
relevance of women’s issues. In fact, in 2016 gender did not have any inde-
pendent effect on how Pennsylvania voters explained their views on Trump’s 
statements toward women, nor did gender have an independent effect on 
Pennsylvania voters’ support for the Kavanaugh nomination. It did, how-
ever, affect their favorability toward the #MeToo movement in 2018. To the 
extent that partisanship is the fundamental lens through which voters assess 
the relevance and appropriateness of candidates’ behavior toward women, 
these findings may lend support to the notion that partisanship in the U.S. 
context increasingly functions as a form of expressive identity (Bankert, 
Huddy, and Rosema 2017; Huddy, Mason, and Aarøe 2015). These findings 
may also lend support to the concept of negative partisanship (Abramowitz 
and Webster 2016; Abramowitz and Webster 2017; Iyengar and Westwood 
2015). Recent work on partisanship suggests that partisan cues increasingly 
influence decisions outside of politics, making partisanship not only a politi-
cal divide, but a social divide as well (Iyengar and Westwood 2015). Partisan 
identification was the primary lens through which voters—both men and 
women—evaluated the relevance and saliency of Trump’s comments toward 
women and the Kavanaugh nomination. Even if voters in Lehigh, Cumber-
land, and Allegheny Counties had reservations about Trump’s comments or 
about the context surrounding the Kavanaugh hearings, Democrats were 
far more likely to say that it made a difference to their vote—and, given the 
strength of partisan attachments, it is highly likely that these voters would 



24 Sarah niebler anD a. lanethea mathewS-SChultz

have voted against Trump (or any Republican) and for a 2018 Democratic 
candidate anyway.

At the same time that we find ongoing support for the centrality of par-
tisan attachments, gender does seem to matter in the ways that voters under-
stand and explain the underrepresentation of women in politics. Female 
respondents to our exit poll believe that electoral politics is not a level playing 
field for women, and these findings are independent of the effects of party. 
Female respondents were more likely to suggest that female candidates for 
office are held to higher standards than men and receive less support from 
party leaders. Moreover, when compared to voters in 2016, all voters in 2018—
including men and women—were more likely to say that women’s underrep-
resentation is partially explained by the fact that women receive less support 
from party leaders. The notion that female candidates receive less support 
from party leaders has generated some empirical support in studies of Repub-
lican women’s electoral candidacies and career paths (e.g., Rogers 2016; King 
and Matland 2003) and may itself partially reflect the ways in which gender 
stereotypes interact with party (perhaps leaving Republican women in a more 
difficult electoral situation, as Sanbonmatsu and Dolan [2009] point out).

We also suspect that 2018 was unique in two ways that likely shaped voters’ 
perceptions of the electoral environment: first, the 2018 midterms followed 
closely on the heels of the defeat of the first major-party female presidential 
nominee; and second, the 2018 Year of the Woman elections featured women 
running as women, more than one-half of whom campaigned on women’s 
issues, including structural gender-based discrimination. In this context, it 
is not especially surprising that survey respondents in 2018 were more likely 
than those in 2016 to say that many Americans weren’t ready to elect women 
to political offices. Finally, in 2018, with historically high numbers of women 
running for office, voters were less likely to believe that women aren’t tough 
enough for politics.

While our findings suggest that female respondents to our exit poll clearly 
perceive gender and gender discrimination to be relevant to women’s electoral 
success, we also find that party has an independent effect on issues related 
to women’s representation. Republicans and Democrats who responded to 
our exit poll offer divergent explanations for women’s underrepresentation in 
politics. Republicans pointed to family responsibilities, women’s lack of expe-
rience, and women’s lack of toughness; Democrats were more likely to look to 
unequal standards, voters’ sexist voting behavior, and lackluster support for 
women from party leaders. Put differently, Republicans emphasize candidate-
centered explanations while Democrats emphasize systemic, institutional, or 



What Do Pennsylvania Voters Think about Gender and Women’s Representation? 25

discriminatory explanations.10 Although we do not have empirical support 
from our exit poll, we suspect that this partisan divergence could be indicative 
of ideological sorting, with Republicans increasingly identified and aligned 
with traditional family values and Democrats aligned with progressive policy 
issues, including increasing opportunities for women in previously male-
dominated domains.

NOTES

1. There has been a surge of recent research on the role of sexism in shaping political 
behavior and electoral outcomes in recent elections. See Cassese and Holman (2019); Paul 
and Smith (2008); Ratliff et al. (2019); Schaffner, MacWilliams, and Nteta (2018); Streb et 
al. (2008); and Valentino, Wayne, and Oceno (2018).

2. See https://sarahniebler.com/data/ for complete survey questionnaires and toplines 
by county for 2016 and 2018.

3. Weights were calculated separately by county, meaning that voters who completed 
surveys in Allegheny County were weighted to the vote totals of that county, those in 
Cumberland County were weighted to the vote totals of that county, and respondents in 
Lehigh County were weighted to the vote totals of that county. Survey weights of respon-
dents who indicated they did not vote in the presidential election remained at 1.0, and all 
other weights were adjusted slightly so that the total number of respondents remained 
the same. As mentioned, our student interviewers spoke to a larger percentage of Clinton 
voters than Trump voters, so respondents who voted for Trump were weighted up while 
respondents who voted for Clinton were weighted down.

4. The independent variables are coded as follows: PartyID (1 = Democrat; 2 = Inde-
pendent; and 3 = Republican); Women (coded as 1 if yes); Age (1 = 18–29 years old; 2 = 
30–49 years old; 3 = 50–64 years old; and 4 = 65+ years old); Education (1 = Less than high 
school; 2 = High school graduate; 3 = Some college or technical school; 4 = 4-year college 
graduate; 5 = Graduate or professional degree).

5. A gender affinity effect could also be present if large numbers of Democratic men 
broke with their party to support Trump in the 2016 election. We did not find that to be 
the case, however. In fact, running the same multivariate model as in Table 3, column 
1, but replacing “GOP women” with “Democratic men” we find Democratic men also to 
be more likely to support Clinton than would be expected based on either their party or 
gender alone. We think this is due to the fact that such a high percentage of men identify 
as Republicans and therefore the overall expected level of support for Clinton among men 
is low. Complete results of this analysis are available upon request.

6. They were not, however, “secret Democrats” based on their responses to issue 
questions that were included in the survey. Republicans were less likely than Democrats 
to support increased gun regulations and were more likely than Democrats to say that 
the United States and other countries were doing enough to combat climate change. 
Interestingly, however, in our sample there were no differences between Democrats and 
Republicans with respect to their levels of approval for the job Donald Trump is doing 
as president.

7. Of the eight women who ran for Congress in 2018 from Pennsylvania, only one, 
Pearl Kim, ran as a Republican; she ran against another female candidate, Democrat 
Mary Gay Scanlon, in the 5th Congressional District. The 5th Congressional District 



26 Sarah niebler anD a. lanethea mathewS-SChultz

covers Delaware County as well as small portions of Montgomery and Philadelphia 
Counties.

8. Many exit poll respondents offered additional reasons by selecting “other” and 
writing-in an open-ended response. In both 2016 and 2018, men were more likely than 
women to select “other” and to offer factors such as “don’t run enough,” “don’t have an 
interest in running,” “more women need to run,” “sexism,” “need the right candidate,” 
“misogyny and its influences,” and “incompetent electorate.”

9. We also ran versions of these models that considered the knowledge question as 
an independent variable predicting the reasons respondents believe women are under-
represented in politics, but it was only asked in 2018. In these models, controlling for 
the same variables above, we found that voters’ accurate knowledge about the absence of 
women from Pennsylvania in the House was only significantly related to the view that 
women lack the necessary experience for political office. In that model, voters who cor-
rectly answered “0” were more likely to say that women lack necessary experience for 
political office. Although limited, this finding is consistent with Dolan and Hansen (2018), 
who find that people with higher levels of political knowledge are less likely to attribute 
women’s underrepresentation to discrimination or systemic causes.

10. A related finding about the views and beliefs of Republican and Democratic party 
activists found that Republicans and Democrats hold varying views on the existence of 
structural discrimination, with Republicans largely dismissing sex discrimination as 
holding women back, and Democrats viewing it as an ongoing problem (see Strolovitch, 
Wong, and Proctor 2017).

REFERENCES

Abramowitz, Alan. 2012. The Polarized Public: Why American Government Is So Dysfunc-
tional. New York: Pearson.

Abramowitz, Alan, and Steven Webster. 2016. “The Rise of Negative Partisanship and the 
Nationalization of U.S. Elections in the 21st Century.” Electoral Studies 41 (March): 
12–22.

———. 2017. “‘Negative Partisanship’ Explains Everything.” Politico, September/ 
October. Available at https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/09/05/negative 
-partisanship-explains-everything-215534.

Bankert, Alexa, Leonie Huddy, and Martin Rosema. 2017. “Measuring Partisanship as a 
Social Identity in Multi-Party Systems.” Political Behavior 39 (March): 103–132.

Berry, Marie E., and Erica Chenoweth. 2018. “Who Made the Women’s March?” In The 
Resistance: The Dawn of the Anti-Trump Resistance Movement, eds. David S. Meyer 
and Sidney Tarrow. New York: Oxford University Press, 75–89.

Brians, Craig Leonard. 2005. “Women for Women? Gender and Party Bias in Voting for 
Female Candidates.” American Politics Research 33 (May): 357–375.

Campbell, David E., and Christina Wolbrecht. 2006. “See Jane Run: Women Politicians as 
Role Models for Adolescents.” Journal of Politics 68 (May): 233–247.

Cassese, Erin C., and Tiffany D. Barnes. 2019. “Reconciling Sexism and Women’s Support 
for Republican Candidates: A Look at Gender, Class, and Whiteness in the 2012 and 
2016 Presidential Races.” Political Behavior 41 (September): 677–700.

Cassese, Erin C., and Mirya R. Holman. 2019. “Playing the Woman Card: Ambivalent 
Sexism in the 2016 US Presidential Race.” Political Psychology 40 (February): 55–74.



What Do Pennsylvania Voters Think about Gender and Women’s Representation? 27

Chozick, Amy, and Jonathan Martin. 2015. “Clinton ’16 Would Give Gender More of a 
Role than Clinton ’08 Did.” New York Times, February 24. Available at https://www 
.nytimes.com/2015/02/25/us/politics/to-break-highest-glass-ceiling-clinton-gives 
-nod-to-gender.html.

CNN. 2012. “President: Full Results, Exit Polls.” Available at http://www.cnn.com/election 
/2012/results/race/president/#. Accessed April 4, 2018.

———. 2016. “Exit Polls.” Available at https://edition.cnn.com/election/2016/results/exit 
-polls. Accessed April 4, 2018.

———. 2018. “Exit Polls: National.” Available at https://www.cnn.com/election/2018/exit 
-polls. Accessed January 21, 2019.

Cohn, Nate. 2018. “For a Change, Democrats Seem Set to Equal or Exceed Republi-
cans in Turnout” New York Times, October 19. Available at https://www.nytimes 
.com/2018/10/19/upshot/midterms-democrats-turnout-enthusiasm.html.

Dolan, Julie. 2004. “Gender Equity: Illusion or Reality for Women in the Federal Executive 
Service.” Public Administration Review 64 (May): 299–308.

Dolan, Kathleen. 1998. “Voting for Women in the ‘Year of the Woman.’” American Journal 
of Political Science 42 (January): 272–293.

———. 2004. Voting for Women: How the Public Evaluates Women Candidates. Boulder, 
CO: Westview Press.

———. 2014. “Gender Stereotypes, Candidate Evaluations, and Voting for Women Candi-
dates: What Really Matters?” Political Research Quarterly 67 (March): 96–107.

Dolan, Kathleen, and Michael Hansen. 2018. “Blaming Women or Blaming the System? 
Public Perceptions of Women’s Underrepresentation in Elected Office.” Political 
Research Quarterly 71 (September): 668–680.

Frasure-Yokley, Lorrie. 2018. “Choosing the Velvet Glove: Women Voters, Ambivalent 
Sexism, and Vote Choice in 2016.” Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics 3 (March): 
3–25.

Hayes, Danny. 2011. “When Gender and Party Collide: Stereotyping in Candidate Trait 
Attribution.” Politics & Gender 7 (June): 133–165.

Hayes, Danny, and Jennifer Lawless. 2016. Women on the Run: Gender, Media, and Politi-
cal Campaigns in a Polarized Era. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.

Huddy, Leonie, Lilliana Mason, and Lene Aarøe. 2015. “Expressive Partisanship: Cam-
paign Involvement, Political Emotion, and Partisan Identity.” American Political Sci-
ence Review 109 (February): 1–17.

Iyengar, Shanto, and Sean J. Westwood. 2015. “Fear and Loathing across Party Lines: 
New Evidence on Group Polarization.” American Journal of Political Science 59 (July): 
690–707.

Jacobson, Gary C. 2006. “‘The Polls’: Polarized Opinion in the States: Partisan Differences 
in Approval Ratings of Governors, Senators, and George W. Bush.” Presidential Stud-
ies Quarterly 36 (4): 732–757. 

Kapur, Shail, and John McCormick. 2018. “Kavanaugh Battle Expands Historic Gender 
Gap Before Election.” Bloomberg, October 1. Available at https://www.bloomberg 
.com/news/articles/2018-10-01/kavanaugh-battle-intensifies-historic-gender-gap 
-before-election.

King, David, and Richard Matland. 2003. “Sex and the Grand Old Party: An Experimental 
Investigation of the Effect of Candidate Sex on Support for a Republican Candidate.” 
American Politics Research 31 (November): 595–612.



28 Sarah niebler anD a. lanethea mathewS-SChultz

Koch, Jeffrey. 1997. “Candidate Gender and Women’s Psychological Engagement in Poli-
tics.” American Politics Research 25 (January): 118–133.

———. 2000. “Do Citizens Apply Gender Stereotypes to Infer Candidates’ Ideological 
Orientations?” Journal of Politics 62 (May): 414–429.

Lizotte, Mary-Kate. 2017. “Gender, Partisanship, and Issue Gaps.” Analyses of Social Issues 
and Public Policy 17 (December): 379–405.

Meyer, David S., and Sidney Tarrow, eds. 2018. The Resistance: The Dawn of the Anti-
Trump Resistance Movement. New York: Oxford University Press.

Nichols, Elizabeth Elianet. 2017. “‘For All the Dorothies’: Motherhood as a Campaign 
Strategy in Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Presidential Television Ads.” International Journal 
of Social Sciences, Humanities and Education 1 (2): 1–13.

Ondercin, Heather L. 2017. “Who Is Responsible for the Gender Gap? The Dynamics of 
Men’s and Women’s Democratic Macropartisanship, 1950–2012.” Political Research 
Quarterly 70 (December): 749–761.

Paul, David, and Jessi L. Smith. 2008. “Subtle Sexism? Examining Vote Preferences When 
Women Run Against Men for the Presidency.” Journal of Women, Politics & Policy 
29 (4): 451–476.

Philpot, Tasha S. 2018. “Race, Gender, and the 2016 Presidential Election.” PS: Political 
Science and Politics 51 (October): 755–761.

Presidential Gender Watch. 2017. “Finding Gender in Election 2016: Lessons from Presi-
dential Gender Watch,” Barbara Lee Family Foundation and Center for American 
Women and Politics. Available at http://presidentialgenderwatch.org/wp-content 
/uploads/2017/05/Finding-Gender-in-Election-2016.pdf.

Ratliff, Kate A., Liz Redford, John Conway, and Colin Tucker Smith. 2019. “Engendering 
Support: Hostile Sexism Predicts Voting for Donald Trump Over Hillary Clinton in 
the 2015 US Presidential Election.” Group Processes & Intergroup Relations 22 (June): 
578–593.

Rogers, Kathleen. 2016. “The Women of the Pennsylvania General Assembly: Explaining 
Women’s Representation in Pennsylvania Politics.” COMMONWEALTH: A Journal 
of Pennsylvania Politics and Policy 18 (2): 103–123.

Sanbonmatsu, Kira. 2002. “Gender Stereotypes and Vote Choice.” American Journal of 
Political Science 46 (January): 20–34.

———. 2003. “Gender-Related Political Knowledge and the Descriptive Representation of 
Women.” Political Behavior 25 (December): 367–388.

Sanbonmatsu, Kira, and Kathleen Dolan. 2009. “Do Gender Stereotypes Transcend 
Party?” Political Research Quarterly 62 (September): 485–494.

Sapiro, Virginia, and Pamela Johnston Conover. 1997. “The Variable Gender Basis of Elec-
toral Politics: Gender and Context in the 1992 US Election.” British Journal of Political 
Science 27 (October): 497–523.

Schaffner, Brian F., Matthew MacWilliams, and Tatishe Nteta. 2018. “Understanding 
White Polarization in the 2016 Vote for President: The Sobering Role of Racism and 
Sexism.” Political Science Quarterly 133 (March): 9–34.

Streb, Matthew J., Barbara Burrell, Brian Frederick, and Michael A. Genovese. 2008. 
“Social Desirability Effects and Support for a Female American President.” Public 
Opinion Quarterly 72 (1): 76–89.

Strolovitch, Dara, Janelle Wong, and Andrew Proctor. 2017. “A Possessive Investment 
in White Heteropatriarchy? The 2016 Election and the Politics of Race, Gender, and 
Sexuality.” Politics, Groups, and Identities 5 (2): 353–363.



What Do Pennsylvania Voters Think about Gender and Women’s Representation? 29

Tyson, Alec, and Shiva Maniam. 2016. “Behind Trump’s Victory: Divisions by Race, 
Gender, Education.” PEW Research Center, November 9. Available at http://www 
.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/09/behind-trumps-victory-divisions-by-race 
-gender-education/.

Valentino, Nicholas A., Carly Wayne, and Marzia Oceno. 2018. “Mobilizing Sexism: The 
Interaction of Emotion and Gender Attitudes in the 2016 US Presidential Election.” 
Public Opinion Quarterly 82 (Special Issue): 799–821.

Sarah niebler is an associate professor of political science at Dickinson College. Her 
research and teaching interests are in American politics, specifically political behavior, 
campaigns and elections, and public opinion. Sarah’s scholarly work has been published 
in the American Journal of Political Science, Legislative Studies Quarterly, Political Com-
munication, the Journal of Public Economics, the Journal of Elections, Public Opinion & 
Parties, and American Politics Research. Additionally, her research and analysis has been 
featured on NPR’s “Hidden Brain,” and in The Hill and Roll Call, among others.

a. lanethea mathews-Schultz is professor and chair of political science at Muhlenberg 
College. Her research areas of interest include gender and American political develop-
ment, civic engagement and political participation, and teaching and learning in political 
science. She is particularly interested in understanding how, when, and with what con-
sequence relationships between citizens and political institutions change over time. Her 
publications have appeared in Political Research Quarterly, Social Science History, and 
Politics & Gender.


	Structure Bookmarks
	Linking the Gender Gap to Women’s Representation
	Research Design and Methods
	Results
	Discussion and Conclusion
	NOTES
	REFERENCES


