What Will Women Voters Do?

Heading into the 2020 presidential election, campaign strategists would do almost anything for a crystal ball to predict voting patterns and give them the key to lock up a large voting bloc. Securing the “women’s vote” would be a major coup, yet in this adaptation from their recently published book, A Century of Votes for Women, political science professors Christina Wolbrecht and J. Kevin Corder explain why this is easier said than done.

What will women voters do? Since the 19th Amendment prohibited the denial of voting rights on the basis of sex a century ago, the press, the public and especially politicians have sought to answer this question. Yet expectations for women voters are often more grounded in assumptions and stereotypes than in evidence, and