Division of Social Science, New York University Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
Department of Sociology, New York University, New York, NY 10012.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2023 Jun 20;120(25):e2221910120. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2221910120. Epub 2023 Jun 12.
Women voted for the Democratic candidate more than men did in each US presidential election since 1980. We show that part of the gender gap stems from the fact that a higher proportion of women than men voters are Black, and Black voters overwhelmingly choose Democratic candidates. Past research shows that Black men have especially high rates of death, incarceration, and disenfranchisement due to criminal convictions. These disparities reduce the share of men voters who are Black. We show that the gender difference in racial composition explains 24% of the gender gap in voting Democratic. The gender gap in voting Democratic is especially large among those who are never-married, and, among them, the differing racial composition of men and women voters is more impactful than in the population at large, explaining 43% of the gender gap. We consider an alternative hypothesis that income differences between single men and women explain the gender gap in voting, but our analysis leads us to reject it. Although unmarried women are poorer than unmarried men, and lower-income voters vote slightly more Democratic, the latter difference is too small for income to explain much of the gender gap in voting. In short, the large gender gap among unmarried voters is not a reflection of the lower incomes of women's households but does reflect the fact that women voters are disproportionately Black. We used the General Social Survey as the data source for the analysis, then replicated results with the American National Election Survey data.
自 1980 年以来，在每届美国总统选举中，女性投票给民主党的比例都高于男性。我们发现，性别差距的部分原因在于，选民中女性黑人的比例高于男性，而黑人选民压倒性地选择民主党候选人。过去的研究表明，由于刑事定罪，黑人男性的死亡率、监禁率和被剥夺选举权的比率特别高。这些差异减少了黑人男性选民的比例。我们发现，种族构成的性别差异解释了投票支持民主党的性别差距的 24%。在从未结婚的人中，投票支持民主党的性别差距尤其大，而在这些人中，男性和女性选民的种族构成差异比总体人口更为显著，解释了性别差距的 43%。我们考虑了另一种假设，即单身男性和女性之间的收入差异解释了投票支持民主党的性别差距，但我们的分析使我们否定了这一假设。尽管未婚女性比未婚男性贫穷，而低收入选民投票略倾向于民主党，但后者的差异太小，无法用收入来解释投票支持民主党的性别差距的大部分原因。简而言之，未婚选民中的巨大性别差距并不是女性家庭收入较低的反映，而是反映了这样一个事实，即女性选民中黑人的比例过高。我们使用综合社会调查作为分析的数据源，然后使用美国全国选举调查数据复制了结果。
