Why Women Vote in Higher Percentages

It took several decades for women to catch up to their male counterparts in terms of voter turnout.

Yet in every presidential election since 1964, the number of female voters has exceeded the number of male voters. Similarly, beginning in 1980, the proportion of eligible female voters who cast a ballot has exceeded the proportion of eligible male voters who did so.

Transcript

It was a gradual process and women became a numerical majority of voters even if they voted in lower rates in the 1960s. And then since 1980 they vote at much higher percentages.

Now there’s a lot of confounding reasons for that, I think part of it is political socialization and that women are more likely to feel that voting is a responsibility and duty. I think part of it is that certain communities, especially communities of color are disproportionately impacted by mass incarceration. And so people who are incarcerated, even if they’re just awaiting trial are much less likely to vote or are completely disenfranchised. In states like Iowa even felons who have completed probation and parole are not re-enfranchised, even though in most states they are.

I think life expectancy also plays into it, right. It was not until really the 1940 and the 1950s that women’s life expectancy caught up to that of men. Because of the impact of infections and postpartum, maternal death, and now we see that for every subsection of the population, women outlive men. So that’s one of the things that contributes to women being a majority of the voting age population, and then that is compounded by the fact that they are more likely to vote.