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AbstractDespite evidence that women win when they run for office, the number of women in the US House of Representatives has not increased substantially. I argue that women win when they run because women engage in strategic behavior by emerging in locations where they are most likely to win. While strategic behavior is a necessary condition for increasing women's representation in office, it is not a sufficient condition. Analyzing regularly scheduled elections between 1992 and 2014, I demonstrate that women engage in strategic behavior by emerging in elections where they are most likely to win. However, the electoral opportunities for women are far from "gender neutral" and are shaped by the parties. Democratic and Republican women are most likely to emerge as candidates in districts where they are likely to win the primary and general elections; however, Republican women face even more constrained electoral opportunities.

AbstractWith the 2020 election marking the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, our attention has been keenly focused on women voters. Media coverage of women voters portrayed them as swing voters and focused on a small subgroup of women (white, married, mothers). I argue that women's and men's voting behavior in 2020 was highly similar to past elections and does not support the claims that women or a subgroup of women are swing voters. I illustrate the diversity of women's voting behavior through analyzing the intersection of gender with race, ethnicity, education, marital status, and parental status. Even though women were not swing voters, women still play an important role in electoral politics, representing the majority of members in both the Democratic and Republican Parties and holding stronger attachments to these parties than men.

Many speculated that we would observe a gender gap in vote choice of historic proportions in the 2018 midterm elections. However, the 2018 gender gap was similar to gender gaps in previous elections. I argue that the gender gap is not about a specific candidate or election but is driven by gender differences in partisan attachments. Variation in the gender gap in Senate and gubernatorial elections highlight that the gender gap does not advantage a particular candidate or party and that women candidates do not increase the size of the gender gap. Race and class intersect with gender to shape the partisan attachments and vote choice of men and women. Finally, while the candidates and events surrounding the 2018 election likely did not impact the gender gap in 2018, I discuss how the 2018 election will shape the gender gap in future elections.

The lead-up to the 2018 midterm elections has seen a record number of women win primaries for the Democratic Party. Not only is the party fielding more women candidates than ever before, women are more likely to vote for Democrats than men. In new research Heather L. Ondercin investigates this gender gap in partisanship, finding that it began to develop in the 1960s, rather than in the 1980s as many had previously thought. What has characterized this gender gap, she writes, is that as the gender imbalance between who both parties elect has grown, so has the their support from men and women, with women increasingly favoring Democrats and men, Republicans.

I argue the gender gap is a function of men and women changing their partisanship as they seek the best representation of their gendered social identity from the political parties. Specifically, shifts in the parties due to party realignments and shifts in the composition of parties' congressional delegations have provided individuals with a clearer signal on which to base their partisan attachments. Men and women have responded differently to these signals and developed different political identities over the past seventy years, resulting in the gender gap in partisanship. To test this theory, I have constructed an innovative macro-level dataset of men's and women's partisan attachments on a quarterly basis between 1950 and 2012. I use a Seemingly Unrelated Regression framework to estimate patterns of men's and women's Democratic macropartisanship and whether particular factors contribute to the gender gap by having different effects on men's and women's partisanship. The results are consistent with my theoretical expectations, highlighting how symbolic images shape partisan attachments, and demonstrate the gender gap is a function of changes in both men's and women's macropartisanship.

Previous research shows that candidate sex serves as a heuristic that lessens the informational burden of political decision making. Building upon this research, we investigate the heuristic effects of candidate sex on the decision to turnout to vote in an election. We posit that by providing ideological and nonideological information about the candidates, candidate sex serves as an informational shortcut that reduces the costs associated with voting and enhances the likelihood of voting in elections when a female candidate is present. Our expectations are supported, even after controlling for a variety of individual-, candidate- and district-level characteristics that are correlated with turnout. Individuals are more likely to turnout in elections featuring a woman candidate, and consistent with our expectations, these effects are especially strong for female Democrats, whose sex and party heuristics convey a consistent "liberal" cue. Our research offers theoretical and empirical contributions to the literature on gender, candidate heuristics, and voter turnout.

The sex of a congressional candidate can influence voting choices, but does candidate sex also influence the timing of those choices? This paper examines that question in light of other information that voters weigh in making their decisions. Using a national survey from the 2006 election, and a unique dataset of political informants, we find that the sex of the candidate conveys ideological information that permits voters to make swifter judgments. Additionally, it reduces the probability of a delayed decision by supplying information helpful to the choice between candidates-even in the absence of ideology. In fact, the impact of candidate sex rivals other variables that are traditionally used to explain the time-to-decision. Consistent with the literature on sex stereotypes, we find a stronger influence for Democratic than Republican female candidates. Adapted from the source document.

Examining all Congressional races from 1992 through 2000, we explore why, over time, some districts are more likely to have women candidates and to elect women than are others. We focus on the obvious, but rarely explored, fact that women's election success is a product of three key stages of the election process: women running, women's successes in the primaries, and finally, women's general election successes. We find that different factors predict success at each stage and that the predictors of women's candidacies and success in open seat races are different than in others.

August 19, 2020, marks the centennial of ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, which guaranteed that the right to vote could not be denied on the basis of sex. The Nineteenth Amendment did not radically transform women's political activism; rather, it was aproductof women's political activism. Women won the franchise in a 72-year battle fought at both the state and national levels. By the time the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified, women had been voting for almost 50 years in localities where they already had secured the right to vote.1The 100th anniversary is an opportune time to reflect on women's continued involvement in politics.