Myth and Reality: The ERA and the Gender Gap in the 1980 Election

Attitudes toward the Equal Rights Amendment were not an important factor in the emergence of the "gender gap" in the 1980 presidential election. Conclusions to the contrary by news analysts, feminist political activists, and political scientists are based on a combination of the power of expectation, faulty analysis, and random bias in the most frequently used survey in political science. Jane J. Mansbridge is Associate Professor of Political Science and Sociology, and Research Faculty at the Center for Urban Affairs and Policy Research, Northwestern University. The author wishes to thank Gary Winters for computer work, and Ronald King, Steven Jackson, Fay Lomax Cook, and Christopher Jencks for comments on an earlier version of this paper, presented at the 1983 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association in Chicago. Kathleen Frankovic of CBS News was extremely helpful in providing CBS/New York Times data before they became widely available. The data analyzed herein were collected by the New York Times and CBS News and processed by the New York Times and CBS News under a grant from the Russell Sage Foundation; by Warren E. Miller and the National Election Studies of the Center for Political Studies at the University of Michigan; and by the National Opinion Research Center of the University of Chicago. The data were provided through the Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research of the University of Michigan. The New York Times, CBS News, the CPS, NORC, and the ICPSR bear no responsibility for the analysis and interpretations presented here. Public Opinion Quarterly Vol. 49:164-178 (? by the Trustees of Columbia University Published by Elsevier Science Publishing Co., Inc 0033-362X/85/0049-164/$2.50 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.45 on Fri, 02 Sep 2016 05:26:24 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms THE ERA AND THE GENDER GAP IN 1980 165 This survey almost certainly provides the best available data on the 1980 election. It was conducted among voters as they left the polls, not at some later date, and the sample (N = 15,201) was far larger than any other study.1 When voters were handed a questionnaire, the front side included the following qucstion: In the presidential election who did you just vote for? 1. Jimmy Carter 2. Ronald Reagan 3. John Anderson 4. Ed Clark 5. Barry Commoner 6. Didn't vote for President 7. Other On the back, the following question appeared: Please mark an "X" to show if you agree or disagree with each of the following statements: . . . I support the Equal Rights Amendment-ERA-the constitutional amendment concerning women. Of the unweighted sample of 15,201, 2452 did not answer the ERA question, but did answer one or more other questions on the back of the questionnaire. These responses have been coded "don't know." Another 975 respondents did not answer any questions on the back of the questionnaire. These respondents seemingly did not turn the questionnaire over and have been eliminated from the analysis.