Race, Gender, and the 2016 Presidential Election

With the first female presidential candidate at the top of the Democratic ticket, the gender gap in 2016 was predicted to be the largest ever. Although the gender gap proved to be bigger than any other in recent history, with a majority of women voting for Hillary Clinton, a disaggregation of the vote by race indicated that not all women equally supported the female presidential candidate. This suggests the existence of a racialized gender gap not previously explored by extant research. Thus, this article explores the nature of this interracial gender gap by examining the political evaluations of men and women, by race, in the 2016 presidential election. Using data from the 2016 American National Election Study (ANES) Time Series Study merged with the ANES Cumulative Data File (1948-2012), predictors of the gender gap were explored and the circumstances under which an interracial gender gap can be narrowed were examined.