AMERICAN & COMPARATIVE POLITICAL BEHAVIOR WORKSHOP
Abstract: Americans have increasingly sorted in recent years into political parties based on gender, race, and religion. This social partisan sorting has occurred in tandem with ideological partisan sorting. In this research we differentiate between social and ideological partisan sorting as explanations for women’s greater concentration within the Democratic Party. We focus on feminism not gender as the identity that drives women and men’s social partisan sorting and assess its effects in recent ANES data. More women than men support feminism but not all women do so. Moreover, feminism has a more powerful influence on partisanship among women than men, boosting women’s identification with the Democratic Party to a greater extent than among men. Its rejection, in the form of anti-feminism, also boosts women’s identification with the Republican Party to a greater extent than among men. These effects are large and independent of different facets of ideological partisan sorting.
Leonie Huddy is a Professor of Political Science at Stony Brook University. Her general field of interest is the psychological origins and dynamics of public opinion and intergroup relations. She is the co-editor (with David O. Sears and Jack Levy) of the 2nd edition of the Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology, served as co-editor of the journal Political Psychology from 2005 till 2010, is past-president of the International Society of Political Psychology (ISPP), and serves on the American National Election Studies Board of Overseers, and numerous editorial boards in political science. Huddy has written extensively on social and political identities, emotions, reactions to terrorism, gender and politics, and race relations. She is the co-author (with Stanley Feldman and George Marcus) of Going to War in Iraq: When Citizens and the Press Matter published by the University of Chicago Press. She is the recipient of the Nevitt Sanford award for professional contributions to political psychology and the Jeanne Knutson award for service to the ISPP.
The American and Comparative Political Behavior Workshop is focused on political behavior broadly considered and invites speakers from a range of social science fields. Lunch will be served.