The GOP Problem With Women <<http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A5050-2004Jan9?language=printer >>
By Richard Morin Sunday, January 11, 2004; Page B05 Men and women may have achieved equality in many areas of American life, but they sure aren't treated the same by Republican primary voters. At least that's the finding of political scientists David C. King of Harvard University and Richard E. Matland of the University of Houston, who found that female candidates don't seem to do as well as similarly qualified men in GOP primaries. On the other hand, the researchers found, political independents and Democrats seem to prefer Republican women running for office over GOP guys. To test how gender affects voting choices, the researchers gathered data on every election to the U.S. House of Representatives beginning in 1990 and identified each contest where there was no incumbent. These open seats, they note in a paper published in the latest issue of American Politics Research, "are crucial as they are the engine that drives change in the makeup of Congress." Then they focused on all the open seat races in which a woman ran in the primary of either major party. There were 243 of them. When King and Matland analyzed these races, they found that women were far more likely to run in Democratic than in Republican primaries -- 148 sought Democratic nominations as compared to 95 who made Republican bids. Drilling deeper into the data, they also discovered that Republican women had a much harder time winning: Slightly more than half of all female candidates won the nomination in Democratic primaries, compared with 39 percent in GOP primaries. In fact, in only one year did Republican women seeking House seats do better than their Democratic counterparts -- and then only by a hair. It was 1992, memorialized by politicos and pundits as "The Year of the Woman," when Democratic women won 57.5 percent of their races and Republican women won 57.9 percent. (In 1994, dubbed by those same politicos as the "Year of the Angry White Male," the gap returned with a roar: 48 percent of Democratic women won open seat nominations in primary contests, but only 26 percent of Republican women.) Interesting, but that's only part of the picture. What's missing is the reason Republican voters seem to be turned off by women running for office. Data to answer that question proved hard to find, but King and Matland hit pay dirt in a little known 1993 national survey that the GOP polling firm Public Opinion Strategies conducted for the Republican Network to Elect Women. The telephone survey of 820 randomly selected adults included a novel experiment. Respondents were read a description of a hypothetical congressional candidate, who was identified as a Republican. They were told the congressional wannabe was a successful businessperson who had "never run for public office before" and was running because "Congress just doesn't get it." The prospective lawmaker's top priority was to "reduce government spending and waste," survey participants were informed. To test for gender bias, the researchers did one other thing: Half the sample was told that the candidate was a woman, the other half was told the candidate was a man. In all other ways, respondents heard the identical description. The survey revealed that sex matters, at least among Republicans. A majority of GOP men (57 percent) and a slightly smaller proportion of Republican women (53 percent) said they would be "very likely" to vote for the man. But when the candidate was identified as a woman, support plummeted by 14 percentage points among men and 11 percentage points among women. Just the opposite was true among self-described political independents and Democrats. The Republican candidate received a boost of 5 to 8 percentage points if the hopeful was identified as a woman, the survey showed. Larger proportions of Democrats, male and female, were "very likely" to support the woman rather than the similarly qualified man. Republican voters were consistently more likely to view the female candidate more negatively on such attributes as trustworthiness, overall qualifications and whether the candidate "shared my concerns," according to the survey. The finding flipped among independents and Democrats: It was the GOP woman who got the higher rating on these attributes. GOP faithful seemed to be particularly dubious of a woman's leadership ability and her conservative credentials, the researchers found. The proportion rating the hypothetical candidate as conservative was 14 percentage points greater when the candidate was identified as a man than when the candidate was identified as a woman. Fascinating, but your Unconventional Wiz must ask: Are survey results from 1993 a bit long in the tooth? People change. Could these insights be ancient history? Perhaps -- but not likely, said King, who is research director at Harvard's Institute of Politics. The findings are consistent with more recent data, he said. "It's not a stretch to say the world we saw in 1993 is consistent with the world we know today," King said. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
