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Abstract
By referring to the theoretical and empirical literature on ‘same gender voting’ and the ‘modern gender gap’, this contribution aims to analyse whether gender played a role in party choice in Bundestag elections. We concentrate on the time period between 1998 and 2013, enabling us to cover three elections while Angela Merkel was the chancellor candidate of CDU and CSU (2005, 2009 and 2013), while she was CDU party chair (2002) and while no women served as chancellor candidate or party chair of CDU and CSU. The results of a dataset compiled from five German national election studies show that women were not more likely to opt for the CDU/CSU since the nomination of Angela Merkel as chancellor candidate, nor were they less likely to vote for the Christian Democrats due to their rather conservative programmatic profile on the order of society.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Marc Debus is Professor of Comparative Government at Mannheim University, Germany. His research interests include political institutions, in particular in multi-level systems, and their effects on political behaviour of voters and legislators, party competition, coalition politics and decision making within parliaments and governments.
Notes
1 This contribution is a shortened and methodologically revised version of the following book chapter: Marc Debus, ‘Weder ein “modern gender gap” noch “same gender voting” in Deutschland? Zum Einfluss des Geschlechts auf das individuelle Wahlverhalten bei den Bundestagswahlen zwischen 1998 und 2013’, in Harald Schoen and Bernhard Weßels (eds), Wahlen und Wähler. Analysen aus Anlass der Bundestagswahl 2013 (Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2016), pp.271–93.
2 For exceptions see Markus Klein and Ulrich Rosar, ‘Ist Deutschland reif für eine Kanzlerin? Eine experimentelle Untersuchung aus Anlass der Bundestagswahl 2005′, in Frank Brettschneider, Oskar Niedermayer and Bernhard Weßels (eds), Die Bundestagswahl 2005. Analysen des Wahlkampfes und der Wahlergebnisse (Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2007), pp.271–92; Bettina Westle and Steffen Kühnel, ‘Geschlecht als Determinante des Wahlverhaltens? Analysen mit der Repräsentativen Wahlstatistik 2005′, in Brettschneider et al. (eds), Die Bundestagswahl 2005, pp.293–320; Ina Bieber, ‘Der weibliche Blick: Verhalten sich Frauen in der Politik anders?’, in Evelyn Bytzek and Sigrid Roßteutscher (eds), Der unbekannte Wähler? Mythen und Fakten über das Wahlverhalten in Deutschland (Frankfurt: Campus, 2011), pp.253–72.
3 See Eckhard Jesse, ‘Die Bundestagswahl 2013 im Spiegel der repräsentativen Wahlstatistik’, Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen 45/1 (2014), pp.113–27.
4 See, for example, Katharina Rohrbach and Ulrich Rosar, ‘Merkel reloaded. Eine experimentelle Untersuchung aus Anlass der Bundestagswahl 2009′, in Thorsten Faas, Kai Arzheimer, Sigrid Rossteutscher and Bernhard Weßels (eds), Koalitionen, Kandidaten, Kommunikation. Analysen zur Bundestagswahl 2009 (Wiesbaden: Springer VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2013), pp.79–105.
5 See Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris, ‘The Developmental Theory of the Gender Gap: Women’s and Men’s Voting Behavior in Global Perspective’, International Political Science Review 21/4 (2000), pp.441–63; Nathalie Giger, ‘Towards a Modern Gender Gap in Europe? A Comparative Analysis of Voting Behavior in 12 Countries’, Social Science Journal 46/3 (2009), pp.474–92.
6 Inglehart and Norris, ‘Developmental Theory of the Gender Gap’; Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris, Rising Tide: Gender Equality and Cultural Change (Oxford: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
7 Jesse, ‘Die Bundestagswahl 2013′.
8 For an overview see Schoen, ‘Soziologische Ansätze in der empirischen Wahlforschung’.
9 Paul Lazarsfeld, Bernhard Berelson and Hazel Gaudet, The People's Choice: How the Voter Makes Up His Mind in a Presidential Campaign (New York: Columbia University Press, 1944).
10 Seymour M. Lipset and Stein Rokkan, ‘Cleavage Structures, Party Systems and Voter Alignments’, in Seymour M. Lipset and Stein Rokkan (eds), Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives (New York: The Free Press, 1967), pp.1–64.
11 Ibid.
12 Seymour M. Lipset, Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics (New York: Doubleday, 1960), p.220.
13 See Jürgen W. Falter, Hitlers Wähler (München: Beck, 1991); Karl Rohe, Wahlen und Wählertraditionen (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1992).
14 Inglehart and Norris, ‘Developmental Theory of the Gender Gap’; Giger, ‘Towards a Modern Gender Gap’.
15 Jeff Manza and Clem Brooks, ‘The Gender Gap in US Presidential Elections: When? Why? Implications?’, American Journal of Sociology 103/5 (1998), pp.1235–66; Giger, ‘Towards a Modern Gender Gap’, p.481; see also Julian Bernauer, Nathalie Giger and Jan Rosset, ‘Mind the Gap: Do Proportional Electoral Systems Foster a More Equal Representation of Women and Men, Poor and Rich?’, International Political Science Review 36/1 (2015), pp.78–98.
16 See Mattei Dogan, ‘Political Cleavage and Social Stratification in France and Italy’, in Seymour M. Lipset and Stein Rokkan (eds), Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives (New York and London: Free Press, 1967), pp.129–95; Wilma Rule, ‘Electoral Systems, Contextual Factors and Women’s Opportunity for Election to Parliament in Twenty-Three Democracies’, Western Political Quarterly 40/3 (1987), pp.477–98; Patrick Emmenegger and Philip Manow, ‘Religion and the Gender Vote Gap: Women’s Changed Political Preferences from the 1970s to 2010′, Politics and Society 42/2 (2014), pp.166–93.
17 Manza and Brooks, ‘Gender Gap in US Presidential Elections’.
18 See Andrea Volkens, Judith Bara, Ian Budge, Michael McDonald and Hans-Dieter Klingemann (eds), Mapping Policy Preferences from Texts: Statistical Solutions for Manifesto Analysts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).
19 See also Eric Linhart and Susumu Shikano, Die Generierung von Parteipositionen aus vorverschlüsselten Wahlprogrammen für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland (1949–2002) (Mannheim: MZES Working Paper No. 98, 2007); Eric Linhart and Susumu Shikano, ‘Ideological Signals of German Parties in a Multi-Dimensional Space: An Estimation of Party Preferences Using the CMP Data’, German Politics 18/3 (2009), pp.301–22; Thomas Bräuninger and Marc Debus, Parteienwettbewerb in den deutschen Bundesländern (Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2012). The societal policy position is calculated by using the Comparative Manifesto Project (CMP) coding scheme and by subtracting the category per604 (‘Traditional morality: negative’) of progressive societal statements from the category per603 (‘Traditional morality: positive’) of conservative societal positions. Values below a score of zero indicate that a party has more progressive positions than conservative ones while values above zero suggest a stronger accent on conservative attitudes than on progressive, libertarian attitudes.
20 See Marc Debus and Jochen Müller, ‘The Programmatic Development of CDU and CSU since Reunification: Incentives and Constraints for Changing Policy Positions in the German Multi-Level System’, German Politics 22/1–2 (2013), pp.151–71.
21 See, for example, Carole J. Uhlaner, ‘Turnout in Recent American Presidential Elections’, Political Behavior 11/1 (1989), pp.57–79; Louis DeSipio and Carole J. Uhlaner, ‘Immigrant and Native Mexican American Presidential Vote Choice across Immigrant Generations’, American Politics Research 35/2 (2007), pp.176–201; Lena Wängnerud, ‘Women in Parliaments: Descriptive and Substantive Representation’, Annual Review of Political Science 12/1 (2009), pp.51–69; Joshua N. Zingher and Benjamin Farrer, ‘The Electoral Effects of the Descriptive Representation of Ethnic Minority Groups in Australia and the UK’, Party Politics (2014), online first 30 October 2014, doi: 10.1177/1354068814556895.
22 Iris M. Young, Inclusion and Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
23 Anne Phillips, The Politics of Presence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).
24 See Sue Thomas, How Women Legislate (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994); for an empirical analysis see, for example, Li-Ju Chen, ‘Do Gender Quotas Influence Women’s Representation and Policies?’, The European Journal of Comparative Economics 7/1 (2010), pp.13–60.
25 See Thomas, How Women Legislate; Jason A. MacDonald and Erin E. O'Brien, ‘Quasi-Experimental Design, Constituency, and Advancing Women’s Interest: Reexamining the Influence of Gender on Substantive Representation’, Political Research Quarterly 64/2 (2011), pp.472–86.
26 See Markus Baumann, Marc Debus and Jochen Müller, ‘Personal Characteristics of MPs and Legislative Behavior in Moral Policy Making’, Legislative Studies Quarterly 40/2 (2015), pp.179–210; Hanna Bäck, Marc Debus and Jochen Müller, ‘Who Takes the Parliamentary Floor? The Role of Gender in Speech-Making in the Swedish Riksdag’, Political Research Quarterly 67/3 (2014), pp.504–18; Marc Debus and Martin E. Hansen, ‘Representation of Women in the Parliament of the Weimar Republic: Evidence from Roll Call Votes’, Politics & Gender 10/3 (2014), pp.341–64. Hanna Bäck and Marc Debus, Parties, Parliaments and Legislative Speechmaking (Basingstoke, London, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).
27 Eric Plutzer and John F. Zipp, ‘Identity Politics, Partisanship, and Voting for Women Candidates’, Public Opinion Quarterly 60/1 (1996), pp.30–57.
28 Anne M. Holli and Holli Wass, ‘Gender-Based Voting in the Parliamentary Elections of 2007 in Finland’, European Journal of Political Research 49/5 (2010), pp.598–630.
29 Karlheinz Niclauß, Kanzlerdemokratie (Paderborn: Schönigh, 2004).
30 ZA-No.4301 (for the Federal Elections 1998 and 2002), ZA-No.4332 (for the Federal Election 2005), ZA-No.5300 (for the Federal Election 2009) and ZA-No.5700 (for the Federal Election 2013).
31 Angus Campbell, Philip E. Converse, Warren E. Miller and Donald E. Stokes, The American Voter (New York: Wiley, 1960); for an overview Harald Schoen and Cornelia Weins, ‘Der sozialpsychologische Ansatz zur Erklärung von Wahlverhalten’, in Jürgen W. Falter and Harald Schoen (eds), Handbuch Wahlforschung (Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2014), pp.241–329.
32 Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper, 1957).
33 Lipset and Rokkan, ‘Cleavage Structures, Party Systems’.
34 For the Federal Election Studies 1998, 2002, 2009 and 2013, we use the pre-election waves; the election study 2005 was executed only after the parliamentary election on 18 September 2005.
35 See Sigrid Roßteutscher, ‘Die konfessionell-religiöse Konfliktlinie zwischen Säkularisierung und Mobilisierung’, in Rüdiger Schmitt-Beck (ed.), Wählen in Deutschland, PVS Sonderheft 45 (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2012), pp.111–33.
36 Performing logit models separately for each election study provides very similar results, see Debus, ‘Weder ein “modern gender gap”’', pp.281–9.
37 See Thomas Brambor, William Clark and Matt Golder, ‘Understanding Interaction Models: Improving Empirical Analyses’, Political Analysis 14/1 (2006), pp.63–82; Michael N. Mitchell, Interpreting and Visualizing Regression Models Using Stata (College Station, TX: Stata Press, 2012).
38 There could be a causal relationship between the theoretical concepts discussed here and the dependent variable. With regard to the theoretical discussion about the connection between gender, ideological orientation, candidate preference and voting behaviour, one could expect – on the basis of the ‘funnel of causality’ concept – that the gender factor does not (only) impact directly on voting intention, but also on moderating variables like ideological distance and chancellor candidate preference. If this would be the case, women should have a greater ideological distance to the CDU/CSU than men and prefer Angela Merkel as chancellor candidate to a greater extent in accordance with the hypotheses derived in this article. We tested whether such a causal relationship exists, but did not find empirical evidence, see Debus, ‘Weder ein “modern gender gap”’, pp. 281–9.
39 In this context, respondents residing in Berlin are attributed to the West German states.
40 Because the CSU is not competing for votes in any of the East German states, we just refer to the CDU when interpreting the model estimates for respondents living in East Germany.
41 Jesse, ‘Die Bundestagswahl 2013′.
42 See also Maciej A. Górecki and Paula Kukołowicz, ‘Gender Quotas, Candidate Background and the Election of Women: A Paradox of Gender Quotas in Open-List Proportional Representation Systems’, Electoral Studies 36/1 (2014), pp.65–80; Mary Stegmaier, Jale Tosun and Klara Vlachova, ‘Women’s Parliamentary Representation in the Czech Republic: Does Preference Voting Matter?’, East European Politics and Societies 28/1 (2014), pp.187–204.
43 See Bernhard Kittel, Wolfgang Luhan and Rebecca Morton (eds), Experimental Political Science: Principles and Practices (Houndsmills: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2012).
44 See Debus, ‘Weder ein “modern gender gap”’.
45 See George H. Mead, Mind, Self and Society: From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1934); Donald D. Searing, ‘Roles, Rules, and Rationality in the New Institutionalism’, The American Political Science Review 85/4 (1991), pp.1239–60; Donald D. Searing, Westminster's World: Understanding Political Roles (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994).
46 See Kerstin Völkl, Kai-Uwe Schnapp, Everhard Holtmann and Oscar W. Gabriel (eds), Wähler und Landtagswahlen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2008); Marc Debus and Jochen Müller, ‘Expected Utility or Learned Familiarity? The Formation of Voters’ Coalition Preferences', Electoral Studies 34/1 (2014), pp.54–67.