A New York Times article about politicans and parenting offered this figure illustrating what percentage of Democratic and Republican voters say they would be likely to vote for a woman with and without children and a man with and without children.
A New York Times article about politicans and parenting offered this figure illustrating what percentage of Democratic and Republican voters say they would be likely to vote for a woman with and without children and a man with and without children.
Comments 6
lauredhel — October 13, 2008
This chart doesn't seem to mean anything useful at all. The numbers in the Republicans column add up to (approximately) 100, which implies that participants were asked to choose only one of the options. Yet the numbers in the Democrats column add up to 112.
What was the sample size and error? Could the difference all be noise?
What were the participants actually asked? The vast majority of people I know would quite happily vote for any of the above, going for record and policies over gender and parenting status. Was expressing this non-bias even an option in the poll?
I can't find the source on the Pew Research website.
mordicai — October 13, 2008
I can't even look at the data, I just get so steamed about the false Republican/Democrat dichotomy.
Gwen Sharp, PhD — October 13, 2008
I'm just confused--were they just being asked "all other things equal, how likely would you be to vote for a person who was..."? I don't quite get what information is being presented here. The columns don't add to 100%, so it must not have asked people to rank them in order of preference. But if the questions were just asked individually (not ranked by preference)--that is, "would you vote for a candidate who was female and had no children?"--then the majority of Americans are saying they wouldn't vote for a person of any gender, with or without kids (that is, the highest reported % is 33, for a woman with kids).
Maybe I got stupid today and can't read graphs any more.
Abby — October 13, 2008
It doesn't make any sense to me, either. Only 24% of (registered?) Democrats would be likely to vote for a father? Really? Huh.
Lisa Wade, PhD — October 17, 2008
I added a "methods/use of data" tag to this post because of the issues with the numbers. Thanks to all of you who pointed out the ridiculous-ness!
Sociological Images » SPECIAL PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION ROUND-UP! — November 4, 2008
[...] also put up posts of figures representing public opinion on blacks, a woman president, and politician parents. And we offered images illustrating how the world would [...]