1. Hillary’s Hypothesis: Attitudes Towards Women and Voting in the 2016 Presidential Election
Harold Clarke
Marianne Stewart
School of Economic, Political & Policy Sciences
University of Texas at Dallas

2. Testing Hillary’s Hypothesis
During 2016 campaign Hillary famously stated that one half of Trump supporters belong in ‘basket of deplorables’ – ‘they are ‘racist, sexist, homphobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic – you name it’
In May 2, 2017 interview, Hillary attributed her loss in part to misogyny – some people didn’t vote for her because she is a woman
Is there empirical evidence consistent with her hypothesis? – see Schaffner et al. (2017)
Are attitudes towards womens’ roles related to voting in the 2016 presidential election? – test with 6 items on women’s roles in Clarke-Stewart CCES module
Multinomial logit model – vote Clinton, vote Trump, non-voter
Controls: Clinton & Trump images, party id, Obama evaluation on important issue, economic evaluations, attitudes Affordable Care Act, attitudes immigration, same sex marriage, abortion, racial resentment scale, age, education, gender, income, race/ethnicity
Robustness tests – all possible combinations of predictor variables - 65,536 analyses
Interaction effects – nonlinear models
Indirect effects via Clinton and Trump images

3. Figure 1. Traditionalist Attitudes Towards Women’s Roles by Gender Average Men = 32%, Average Women = 20%

4. Figure 2. Voting for Clinton and Trump Among Those With ‘Traditionalist’ Attitudes Towards Women’s Roles Average Trump = 65%, Average Clinton = 21%

5. Figure 3. Probability of Voting for Clinton Versus Trump or Non-Voting as Attitudes Towards Women’s Roles Move From Traditionalist to Progressive

6. Conclusions
Sizable minorities with ‘traditionalist’ attitudes towards women’s roles – average = 27%
Multivariate analyses - attitudes towards women’s roles have significant effect on probability of voting for Clinton controlling for several other predictors
Results are robust – 65,536 analyses!
Effects are large
Indirect effects via candidate images
No evidence of gender interactions
Attitudes toward women’s roles influenced voting in 2016 presidential election. Did these attitudes cost Hillary the election? A separate but interesting question.

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8. Figure A1. Clinton and Trump Leader Traits, Pre-Election Survey

9. Figure A2. Feelings About Presidential Candidates, 2008, 2012, 2016

10. Figure A3. Interaction Effects Between Attitudes Towards Women’s Roles and Gender in Clinton Voting Model
horizontal red lines indicate
95% confidence interval
relines are %
confidence intervals