Do (Women’s) Issues Matter? Campaigns and the Gender Gap.

Despite the importance of the gender gap in American politics, there is still much debate about the source of this disparity in party identification and vote choice. For example, it is unclear whether campaigns have a role in affecting the size of the gender gap. In this paper, we examine how the issue-focus of Senate campaigns influences the size of the gender gap in those contests. We argue that the gender gap will be larger in elections where women?s issues are more central to the campaign and smaller when women?s issues are not as salient. Our analysis combines exit polls with data on campaign advertising in 24 Senate campaigns to examine the relationship between campaigns and the gender gap. We find that, even when controlling for partisanship, gender is a significant factor in affecting vote choice when women?s issues are more prevalent in campaign advertising. Thus, campaigns can affect the size of the gender gap by focusing more on the issues that tend to produce that gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]