Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the Meaning of America by John Sides & Michael Tesler & Lynn Vavreck

Author:John Sides & Michael Tesler & Lynn Vavreck [Sides, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2018-10-30T06:00:00+00:00

That is what happened in 2016. Among men, the measure of “modern sexism” introduced in chapter 6 was more strongly correlated with vote choice in 2016 than it was in 2012 (figure 8.11). One caveat is that sexism was measured in surveys conducted during and after the 2016 campaign, and some people may have changed their answers to questions about sexual harassment based on their views of Trump and his accusers. If so, gender attitudes may be both a cause and a consequence of how people voted.

Still, the 2016 campaign appeared to activate modern sexism, especially among white men and even after accounting for party identification, self-reported ideology on the liberal-conservative spectrum, and attitudes toward African Americans. (Attitudes about gender were not significantly related to the vote choices of nonwhites.) Among white women interviewed in the December 2016 VOTER Survey (left panel of figure 8.11), the relationship between modern sexism and vote choice was similar, with both Obama and Clinton doing worse among white women with higher modern sexism scores. But in the aggregate, this did not cost Clinton many votes because relatively few women have higher scores on this scale. However, Clinton also failed to generate additional support, compared to Obama, among women who expressed less sexism.58

But there was unusually strong opposition to Clinton among more sexist men (right panel of figure 8.11). Although Clinton appeared to do somewhat better than Obama among white men who scored low in modern sexism, white men with higher scores were more likely to vote for Trump than they had been to vote for Romney. And this was a substantial number of white men: nearly a third scored above the midpoint on this measure. Thus, the increasing correlation between this measure of sexism and vote choice appeared to hurt Clinton overall. In the exit poll, Clinton lost white men by a whopping 31 points—a wider margin than any candidate since Walter Mondale lost forty-nine states to Ronald Reagan in 1984.

Gender may have also mattered in subtle ways that are more difficult to quantify. There are at least three possibilities, although the evidence is necessarily speculative. For one, the well-documented double bind that women in leadership roles often face—whereby women who show they are tough enough for the job risk being disliked—may have contributed to Hillary Clinton’s low favorable ratings. Clinton certainly thought it did, referencing the double bind in her memoir and citing data that show “the more successful a man is, the more people like him. With women it’s the exact opposite.”59

Clinton may also have faced a double standard in which women are held to a higher ethical standard than men. Female candidates are generally perceived as more honest and ethical than male candidates. Because voters expect women to be honest, the penalty for appearing dishonest may be greater for women than for men. For example, one study found that the American Bar Association punished female attorneys more severely than male attorneys for similar ethical violations.60 This double standard may help explain

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