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xx Women as Voters voters in terms of vote choices, partisan identities, and policy preferences, thus diversifying the views present among the voting public. How Women Influence the Composition of the Electorate Women entered the electorate gradually after the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. In the years immediately following the granting of women’s suffrage, some women chose not to vote. This was due in part to concerns regarding the appropriateness of women voting. Women’s early reluctance to vote varied in terms of demographics and region. In the 1920s, immigrant and uneducated women were the most hesitant to vote, whereas women living in the West were more likely to vote at rates similar to those of men than women living in other parts of the country (McGlen et al. 2011). As women have become more fully inte- grated into the electorate, their presence has not only increased the overall number of voters registered and casting a ballot, but the number of women in the electorate has surpassed that of men. Voter Registration In 2016, 72 percent of eligible women voters, approximately 84 million, reported being registered to vote as compared to 69 percent, or 74 million, of eligible men voters (CAWP 2017b, U.S. Census Bureau 2016). According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the percentage of women registered to vote has exceeded that of men since the 1980 election (2015a, 2015b). Since the 1970s, women younger than 45 years of age have registered at higher rates than men in the same age cohorts (U.S. Census Bureau 2015a, 2015c). In 2016, only men in the oldest cohort, 75 years and older, registered at higher rates than women of the same age—79 percent compared to 75.6 percent (U.S. Census Bureau 2016). In her examination of voter participation and turnout, Susan MacManus dis- cusses how political parties spent considerable time and effort to register new voters in both 2008 and 2012. These efforts by partisan and nonpartisan groups, spurred in part by the close presidential elections of 2000 and 2004, targeted their registration efforts in multiple ways. This included targeting younger women voters on college campuses, as the American Association of University Women (AAUW) and the College Republicans did, by working to educate students about elections procedures and polling locations alongside completing new-voter registration forms (MacManus 2014, 96). College campuses were not the only places political parties and interest groups worked to register women voters. These groups targeted new women voters by mailing and e-mailing voter registration forms, going door to door in various neighborhoods, and airing public service announcements on television and radio stations throughout the country (MacManus 2014, 98). These efforts illustrate how women as voters, particularly their rates of voter registration, became important actors in recent elections. Different groups, each with a stake in the outcomes of the elections, directly targeted women as potential sources of electoral support and power by striving to ensure that women showed up on Election Day.