Election 2010: Women Voters Less Likely Than Men to Support Republican Women Candidates; Gender Gap Remains a Force in Election 2010

Despite the attention to Republican women candidates in this year's elections, polls show that the presence of a Republican woman candidate in a race has not eliminated the gender gap or reversed its direction.  In most 2010 races, as in past elections, women are more likely than men to prefer the Democratic candidate regardless of the gender of the candidates. The gender gap – a measurable difference in the percentage of women and the percentage of men favoring or voting for a given candidate – remains a significant force in this year’s elections. 

The Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP), a unit of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University, examined recent polls in races for U.S. senator and governor and found gender gaps as great as 15 percentage points.  CAWP found notable gender gaps in high-profile races involving Republican women candidates, with women less likely than men to support the Republican woman candidate:

“With many prominent women candidates this year – and particularly highly visible Republican women – pundits keep looking for evidence that female voters lean toward women candidates,” notes CAWP director Debbie Walsh. “But the typical pattern remains in force this year; women as a group are more likely than men to favor the Democrat, even when the Republican candidate is a woman.”

Gender gaps are also apparent in other critical U.S. Senate and gubernatorial races, with women less likely than men to support the Republican candidate:

In some races, both women and men favor the Republican candidate, but women do so at a lower rate than men. For example, in the New Hampshire Senate race, both women and men prefer Republican Kelly Ayotte, but women are 15 points less likely to favor Ayotte than are men.

A more detailed table of selected polling data showing gender gaps is appended to this release.