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Context Matters: The Influence of State and Campaign Factors on the Gender Gap in Senate Elections, 1988–2000

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2007

Heather L. Ondercin  and
Jeffrey L. Bernstein
Heather L. Ondercin
Affiliation:
The Pennsylvania State University
Jeffrey L. Bernstein
Affiliation:
Eastern Michigan University
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Abstract

Since the 1980s, we have witnessed how the gender gap grows and shrinks in various elections; we address how the context in which the election takes place influences the size of the divide. Studying the gender gap in Senate elections allows us to look at multiple elections across time and space to determine when significant electoral gender gaps arise and when they do not. This contrasts with more traditional approaches that focus either on a single presidential election or on a single year's House or Senate elections. We demonstrate that electoral gender gaps arise from campaign-level factors (such as candidate sex, the presence of an incumbent, and the issues raised in the campaign), state-level factors (demographics and politics of the states), and the complex interaction of these factors.We would like to thank the many people who gave us helpful feedback and comments on earlier drafts of this paper, particularly Suzanna De Boef, Susan Welch, Eric Plutzer, the Gender and Politics Working Group at Penn State University, Margaret Conway, the editors of this journal, and our anonymous reviewers. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2001 Annual Meeting of the Southern Political Science Association.

Type
Research Article
Information
Politics & Gender , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , March 2007 , pp. 33 - 53
Copyright
© 2007 The Women and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association

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