xxiv Women as Voters gap in voting for women candidates, but also considers levels of information about candidates and effective evaluations (Dolan 2008, 81). Dolan’s study, which relies upon survey data from the NES, finds that women voters do tend to feel positively toward women candidates, but this is conditioned strongly by political party (2008, 87). That is, partisanship matters alongside candidate gender. In terms of information about candidates, both women and men voters tend to have more information about women candidates than men candidates (Dolan 2008, 88). Overall, in relation to vote choice, Dolan finds limited evidence of a gender affinity effect—neither positive effect nor more information about women candi- dates automatically translates into electoral advantages for women candidates (2008, 88). Party Identification Women’s vote choices are directly connected to the partisan identities they pos- sess and use in making their voting decisions. In recent years, women are more likely to identify with and support the Democratic Party than the Republican Party as compared to men (CAWP 2016). According to the Center for American Women and Politics, in 2014, 36 percent of women identified as Democrats as compared to 27 percent of men and 20 percent of women and 23 percent of men identified as Republicans (2016). Scholars have detected this difference in party identification between women and men over a number of years. As women began voting at higher rates than men in the 1980s, they also showed a stronger affilia- tion with the Democratic Party at the same time and continued to do so in the years that followed (Box-Steffensmeier, De Boef, and Lin 2004, 516). A gender difference in party identification has not always been present in U.S. politics. It was not until 1964 that women began to identify more with the Demo- cratic Party. Prior to that, women expressed a stronger identification with the Republican Party (Dolan, Deckman, and Swers 2011). Also, it was not until the late 1960s that women and men began to differ significantly in their proclivity to support one political party over the other (McGlen et al. 2011, 81). Karen Kaufmann and John Petrocik, in their study of shifts in partisanship and voting behaviors, explain why the gender divide in partisan identification emerged and has contin- ued to widen. In their analysis of NES survey data from 1952 to 1996, they find that the changing politics of men contributed significantly to the contemporary partisan difference between women and men. In 1952, 59 percent of men and 58 percent of women identified with the Democratic Party, whereas in 1996, 43 per- cent of men and 57 percent of women identified themselves as Democrats (Kaufmann and Petrocik 1999, 866, 876). As men identified less as Democrats, their Republican Party alignment grew. In a second study of this trend, Kaufmann confirms the continuation of two patterns: (1) the relative stability of women’s party identification in recent years (between 1952 and 2004, the percentage of women identifying as Republicans shifted from 58 to 53%) and (2) men’s shift in partisanship toward the Republican Party (between 1952 and 2004, men’s identifi- cation as Democrats dropped by 16 percentage points, moving from 59% to 43%) (Kaufmann 2009, 94).
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