Working Paper:Gender, National Security, and
the Election of 2004
Richard C. Eichenberg
Department of Political Science
Tufts University
September 30, 2004
Update:
October 13, 2004
Update2:
October 26, 2004
Update3: October 31, 2004
If anything should have been true about the election of 2004, it
was that the continuing violence in Iraq would confer an advantage
to the democratic candidate among female voters, a group that has
been crucial to the party’s voter base in recent elections. As is
well-known, in the 2000 election Al Gore outpolled George Bush among
women by 54 to 43 percent, a pattern that matched the
disproportionate success among women that the democrats had enjoyed
in the
1992 and 1996 (and earlier) elections.
As we will see below, John Kerry maintained a similar lead of over
10 points among women as late as July 25th, but recent survey
results suggest that the margin has all but disappeared. In a spate
of late September polls, Kerry is essentially tied with Bush among
women voters, and he may even be slightly behind (CBS/NYT;
IPSOS-AP;
ABC/WashPo;
Pew Center;
LATimes).
This is surprising, for if there is one consistent finding of
scholarly studies, it is that women are disproportionately sensitive
to and critical of the human cost of armed conflict (see the
additional sources listed at the end of this essay). Writing in late
spring 2003, I myself generalized from this evidence by predicting
that “Should establishment of stability [in Iraq] prove a lengthy
and inconclusive process, and especially if US forces continue to
suffer casualties, we would expect public support for the mission in
Iraq to decline, and based on the evidence….gender differences would
be no small part of the loss of consensus.” (p. 141 of my study
listed at the end of this essay).
True, candidate Bush still enjoys a much larger margin among men
than his 50 percent standing among women; as some have pointed out,
a “gender gap” still exists. Yet it remains true that no democratic
candidate is likely to win a presidential election unless he or she
can find the female votes to offset what appears to be a permanent
advantage of republicans among men.
At the moment, Mr. Kerry is not doing that. In the remainder of this
short essay, I raise 3 questions:
- When did Kerry lose his advantage among women?
- Have women’s views of national security issues changed over the
same period?
- Why?
As we will see, the answers to the first two questions are fairly
clear, but the answer to the third remains open to debate and
speculation.
When Did John Kerry Lose His Lead Among Women?
We can answer this question because the
Washington Post has made it
possible to tabulate detailed demographic breakdowns of its recent
poll results (find it
here). In the following analyses, voter
preference for Bush and Kerry is based on samples of likely voters
in the ABC/Post polls (usually about 750 of the total sample), while
other questions on policy issues are based on the full national
sample of the adult population. The voter preference question is a
three-way “horse race” that also offers Ralph Nader as a choice.
 As we can see in the graphic on the left, on July 25, Kerry led Bush
among women by about the same margin that Gore had enjoyed in the
2000 election, but he has been slipping ever since. It is not clear
from the graphic if any single event drove the change (Bush actually
dropped back among women after the republican convention, but Kerry
did not gain). What seems most significant is that Kerry appears to
have been dropping among women throughout August and September,
while the gains for Bush are most noticeable during September. Why
this might be the case is something I discuss below.
Interestingly, the same pattern is not true of voting preferences
among men. As shown in the chart immediately below, Kerry’s support
among men has fluctuated above and below 40 percent since mid-July.
Bush’s support among men has fluctuated a bit more widely, but like
Kerry’s, his support among men on September 26 was not dramatically
different from what it had been on July 11 or July 25.
What this tells us, of course, is that the lead that Bush has opened
over Kerry during the last month especially is due entirely to gains
among women voters.
Women and National Security
 I mentioned above that I would not try to explain these changes in
voter preferences until the third section of this essay. But recent
popular discussion requires that we at least take an intermediate
step, for a great deal of recent speculation –at least in the
media—focus on the role of national security issues as the cause of
shifting female preferences. There are two variants. The first, best
expressed by
Scott Lehigh in the
Boston Globe, is that the Bush
campaign has successfully equated the war in Iraq with the war
against terror as retribution for the attacks of September 11, 2001.
The second variant is that, quite apart from Iraq, the Bush campaign
has succeeded in making the “war against terror” the central
preoccupation of voters, and women in particular are sensitive to
the argument that security against terrorism is the central
challenge that the country faces (two prominent press discussions
are in the
NYT and the
WashPo).
 Both arguments might suggest that women’s assessments of the Iraq
war would change, either because it is equated with combating
terrorism, or because the increased salience of terrorism might
simply divert attention from Iraq.
The polling data from the
Washington Post do indeed suggest that
something has happened to women’s views of the situation in Iraq.
The graphic at left, for example, shows the net level of approval of
the President’s handling of the situation in Iraq (approval minus
disapproval). In April, when things were very bad indeed in Iraq
(135 American deaths), there was a yawning 40 point gender gap on
the war: a net 13 percent of men approved of the President’s
handling of Iraq, versus a net –27 percent of women. By September
26, that gap had been reduced to 16 percent: net 6 percent of men
approving, and –10 women approving.
What is more, the most significant movement in the numbers among
women occurred between July 25 and September 26, that is, after the
intense republican campaigning on Iraq (and terrorism) during August
that continued in their convention and after. Women’s views of Iraq
improved by about 10 points during this period, while men’s views
moved hardly at all.
Finally, if we compare these views on Iraq to the first graphic
shown above (voter preference among women only), we see that it was
precisely during this period that Bush gained among women in the
horse race and Kerry declined. Between July 25 and September 26,
Bush gained 8 points among women; Kerry lost 6 points.
 And what of terrorism? Did the Bush campaign convince women voters
in late summer that terrorism –and not the war in Iraq—was the most
important issue facing the country? The graphic at right suggests
that it certainly increased the salience of terrorism among women.
The graphic shows answers to the WashPo question that asks “What
will be the SINGLE most important issue in your vote for president
this year: The U.S. campaign against terrorism, the war in Iraq, the
economy and jobs, education, health care, or something else?”. On
July 25, just before the democratic convention, the Iraq war was a
very important issue for women: it overshadowed “the US campaign
against terrorism” by 7 percentage points, but perhaps even more
important, it was also more important than education and healthcare
(combined in the graphic), issues of demonstrated concern to women.
By August 29, not much had changed; if anything, women were slightly
more concerned about healthcare. The choice of “the economy and
jobs” (not shown) was unsurprisingly high for both men and women;
for men, it registered 24, 34, and 31 percent for the three time
points shown, and for women 27, 31, and 28.
The most noticeable change came in the numbers after August 29. By
September 26, after the republican convention and post-convention
campaign that dwelt intensively on terrorism, Iraq, and the
connection between the two, women placed the war against terrorism
near the top of their list of concerns (after the economy), an
increase of 7 percent (the increase between August and September is
particularly significant given that the question offers 6 response
alternatives, thus offering a number of ways to distribute an
answer). The importance of the war in Iraq also declined noticeably.
Curiously, this was not the case among men (not shown). Among men,
the percent listing terrorism as the most important electoral issue
actually declined by 3 points from August 29.
In any case, the net result of all these changes for the views of
women is this: on July 25, the economy was the top-ranked issue
among women, the war in Iraq ranked second, and the war against
terrorism ranked a distant fourth. By September 26, the economy
still ranked first among women, but terrorism was now a close
second, and the Iraq war had dropped to fourth.
We can summarize these questions on Iraq and important electoral
issues as follows. First, women’s disapproval of the President’s
handling of Iraq declined significantly during August and September.
Second, during September, the war against terrorism increased
noticeably in importance to the vote choice of women in particular.
Third, the importance of the war in Iraq declined in importance
among women.
Why?
I have established a correlation: women’s vote preferences have
shifted along with their evaluation of the situation in Iraq and the
importance of terrorism as an election issue in ways that men’s
views did not.
But the question remains: why did this happen?
Two plausible explanations come to mind.
- The Security Moms. One explanation, popular with the press, is
that women are disproportionately fearful of terrorism and have
therefore shifted their preferences to the President because of his
demonstrated leadership since September 11th and his success in
employing the imagery of that event. The crux of this argument is
that women are more receptive to this message than men (see
NYT and
WashPo for two recent examples).
The problem with this argument is that the evidence to support it is
mixed. The NYT article linked immediately above does include claims
from some pollsters that their results show a disproportionate fear
of terrorism among women. But in other surveys, the views of men and
women on the threat of terrorism and how to deal with it are in fact
quite similar. It is true that women see terrorism as a threat. In a
recent survey by the German Marshall Fund (June 04), 94% of women
said that “the threat of a terrorist attack with weapons of mass
destruction” was an important threat to the United States. But the
figure for men is exactly the same 94%. In the same survey, 93
percent of men and 90 percent of women approved of using military
force to prevent a terrorist attack. Asked about the American
attacks against the Taliban regime after 9/11, 71 percent of women
were in favor –but so were 80 percent of men (the average of 19
surveys reported in my article listed in the resources at the end of
this essay).
In general, both men and women are supportive of forceful actions to
deal with terrorist acts against the United States, and that is
precisely the point in attempting to explain the recent movement of
opinion in the Presidential race. If both genders have similar views
on terrorism and how to deal with it, why is it that the vote
preferences of women –in particular-- have shifted? In addition, as
concerns the war in Iraq specifically, there is a complication: of
those who expressed a clear opinion, 73 percent of women said that
the war had “increased the threat of terrorism in the world”,
compared to 57 percent of men (in the Marshall Fund Survey linked
above). Even on the issue of terrorism, the President had an “Iraq
problem” among women.
In summary, the problem with the “security Mom” explanation is that
it works equally well for “security Dads”. Simply raising the fear
of terrorism in general is likely to provoke similar reactions from
men and women. If we are to explain why women, highly critical of
the Iraq war, nonetheless switched their vote preference to Bush, we
have to base that explanation on an argument that differentiates the
views of men and women.
- Diversion and Redefinition. In my article on gender differences
listed at the end of this essay, I discuss several factors that
(disproportionately) lower women’s support for military operations
when they are mentioned in survey questions: military or civilian
casualties; involvement in civil wars; and the combination of
casualties and a failed military mission (such as in Somalia). It is
also worth noting that women are more supportive of social spending
programs than men, and slightly less supportive of defense spending.
Simply listing these factors helps us to understand why women’s
disapproval for the war in Iraq was so high by the summer of 2004:
casualties in Iraq continued in what had essentially become a civil
war, the prospects for success looked low indeed, and the financial
cost was very high.
I would argue that by placing terrorism at the center of its
rhetoric, the Bush campaign reversed the trend of these sentiments
in two ways: First, it diverted attention from Iraq and returned it
to terrorism. Perhaps more importantly, the rhetoric insistently
–and persistently—redefined the situation in Iraq from an issue that
is unpopular with women (involvement in an increasingly intractable
civil war) to one that is very popular (fighting terrorists). The
concatenation of arguments about terrorism, Iraq and September 11,
especially at the republican convention and after, presumably had an
even more pointed effect (reinforced by the anniversary of September
11th). The administration may also have received an assist from the
media, which some argue reduced its coverage of Iraq during the
summer (here is one such argument). We do know that the
public’s
attention to the news from Iraq declined during the summer, although
there may have been less news to attend to.
Of course, there was nothing Bush could do about the casualties that
had been suffered (other than to claim increasingly that they were
lost so the fight against terror would not be brought to American
shores). Nonetheless by redefining the war in Iraq as part of the
post-September 11 struggle against terrorism, Bush shifted the focus
from a situation that is disproportionately unpopular with women to
one on which the views of men and women are similar (see above).
Perhaps the most convincing testimony to the plausibility of the
second explanation is that it reads like a playbook for John Kerry’s
renewed criticism of the war in Iraq. Beginning with the speech at
NYU on September 20, Kerry has criticized both the human and
financial costs of the war and charged that the administration’s
claims of success are a “fantasy”. Of course, these arguments could
influence the views of both men and women, but as I have noted, they
are of particular concern to women. In addition, the Kerry rhetoric
has had the predictable effect of increasing news coverage of Iraq
and the problems there (the public’s attention to news about Iraq
increased in September to a level not seen since April)
If the “divert and redefine” explanation for Bush’s improving poll
numbers is correct, we would expect Kerry’s rhetoric to have the
effect of winning back some female voters, especially if amplified
before a huge audience in the presidential debates. However, the
problem for Kerry –in the debates and beyond—is that it is not
entirely clear that his own policies on Iraq would bring fewer
casualties, lower costs, or improved chances for success.
Additional Resources
- Eichenberg, Richard C., "Gender Differences in Attitudes Toward the
Use of Force by the United States, 1990-2003 " International
Security, 28/1 (Summer 2003), 110-141.
- Eichenberg, Richard C., and Richard Stoll,
The Political Fortunes of
War: Iraq and the Domestic Standing of President George W. Bush.
London: the
Foreign Policy Centre, July 2004.
- Sapiro, Virginia, and Pamela Johnston Conover, “Gender, Feminist
Consciousness, and War,” American Journal of Political Science, 37/4
(November 1993), pp. 1079-1099.
For helpful comments on this essay, I am grateful to Jeffrey
Berry, Kent Portney, Virginia Sapiro, and Deborah Schildkraut.
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