This post is one of a series of posts in observance of Women’s History Month.

In 1964 and in every national election
since, the Census Bureau has conducted a post-election survey asking people
whether they were registered and, separately, if they had voted in the previous
election. The surveys provide a great source of demographic information about
the voting public. The data are “recall” data, and people often give what they
see as the civically “correct” response, indicating they voted. So yearly
numbers on how many Americans voted are inflated. But they still give us
excellent trend data on changes in voting patterns.

According to the Census in the 2016 presidential election, the last year for which data on the presidential race are available, “a majority of both the registered and voting populations were female (53.2 percent of the registered population, 53.6 percent of voters).” Because women are a larger share of the electorate, women have disproportionate clout at the ballot box. In 2016, around 10 million more women voted than men.

This male-female gap has existed in every election since 1980, with women registering and voting at higher rates than men. While white men and women don’t differ very much in terms of voting rates, there is a substantial gender difference among black men and women, with black women voting at significantly higher rates than black men.

The post Women making history: Women’s turnout and registration appeared first on American Enterprise Institute – AEI.