Would like to acknowledge and thank my co-author Dr. David Redlawsk

Transcription

1 Would like to acknowledge and thank my co-author Dr. David Redlawsk 1

2 Women voters were a hot commodity in this past presidential election, and there is no doubt as to why According to Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, we know that women are more likely than men: To register to vote To turnout to vote (both in terms of number and percentage rate) And as is widely known from various sources, are more likely particularly since 1980 To identify as a Democrat (As of Feb 2012, Ds 38% w, 25% m; Rs 30% w, 31% men) To vote Democrat Women are also late deciders and make up a higher number of undecided and swing voters than men (CAWP). Largest gender gap in the past 10 years ( points, points) 2

3 WHAT IS THE WAR ON WOMEN? ACLU: Legislative and rhetorical attacks on women and women s rights [ ] includ[ing] a widerange of policy efforts designed to place restrictions on women's health care and erode protections for women and their families. Emily s List: Republican Members of Congress have relentlessly tried to restrict women s rights, access to basic health care, and economic equity. During the 46 weeks Congress was in session, from January 2011 through July 2012, the Republicans spent 38 of them attacking women s rights Large focus on women voters and a variety of women s issues was subsumed under an allencompassing war on women label. War on Women Timeline House votes on choice-related issues Multiple introductions, threats, etc to choice-related issues Threat to defund planned parenthood 26 states enacted anti-choice measures 3

4 2012 Sandra Fluke, the contraception debate, and Rush Limbaugh Mommy Wars Ann Romney v. Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen Todd Akin: legitimate rape Richard Mourdock: pregnancy from rape something that God intended Obama administration s Julia Meme The Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act Binders full of women 3

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6 - The war on women term really has its roots in rhetoric used by the Democratic Party since 2010/ The issues that are associated with the war on women are the basis for/one in the same with the issues that the Democratic Party used to frame their war on women argument 5

7 - At first, denial by Republicans that there was any war of women was being launched - Some said war actually being launched against men - RNC Chairman and others described it as fictitious, infamously equating it to a war on caterpillars 6

8 Romney took a different direction and put new spin: in April 2012 interview with Fox, he said the real war on women was instead created by the Obama administration and about women s unemployment and jobs: Romney, April 11: He [Obama] has lost 800,000 jobs during his presidency. And by the way, do you know what percentage of those jobs lost were lost by women? Over 92 percent of the jobs lost under this president were lost by women. His policies have been, really, a war on women. Everyone jumped on the Romney counterargument bandwagon, and so the story became NOT about the war on women being a myth BUT about OBAMA s war on women in terms of job and economy Truth: Net decline in jobs between Jan 2009 March 2012 of 740,000 jobs for men and women. Net loss of 683,000 jobs for women 92.3% of jobs lost under Obama were lost by women Though men took a bigger hit, decline began much earlier; job recovery for women started later and at a slower rate 7

9 The two parties and their candidates increasingly fought over women voters, they both argued that a war on women was being waged (blaming their opponent as responsible for it), but they differed on how they defined this war and the major issues that they claimed lay beneath it. So question becomes how effective was the substance of each of these frames and the issues they used by which they framed the war on women? While in the end we know what happened and Obama handedly won the women s vote, these differing frames still require further investigation as does the war on women storyline in general. We need to examine whether the overall war on women concept works at all in terms of encouraging the belief that women s rights are genuinely under attack in the United States. 8

10 While the Democrats health frame may not induce greater support among those generally opposed to reproductive issues like contraception and abortion, the Republicans unemployment and jobs frame may activate the consideration of issues that are more likely to coincide with the priorities of more moderate and right-leaning voters thus ideally producing greater support for (at least some) women s issues among groups who would not typically support the war on women -like rhetoric regarding women s disadvantage. 9

11 Using Chong and Druckman s theory on competitive framing environments as a starting point, we test how these issue frames based on differing partisan arguments compare not only to one another but also to a baseline where no issues are invoked. This framing experiment attempts to simulate the successes and failures of each party s war on women frame during the 2012 election. Directly testing these frames allows us to assess who accepts the war on women concept and in what context. We furthermore not only have a framing experiment here, but also a priming experiment. The frames can further subsequently prime attitudes toward other related questions about who was most responsible for waging the war on women and how much influence it had on individual vote choice. 10

12 In the first study, we embedded two experiments on a Rutgers-Eagleton Poll telephone survey of 903 adults in Oct Party ID in our sample: 41% D, 37% I, 22% R Gender breakdown: 46% M, 54% W Party by gender: 11

13 Respondents were randomized across three different conditions 12

14 Dems issues were main focus of how they framed war on women Reps taken straight from Romney s ad about Obama s war on women and from statements he and other Republicans made about an economic war on women Frames not attached to either partisan side we don t put a partisan cue with it and say who is advocating it 13

15 In general, Republicans received most of the blame Both and neither options were voluntary 14

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17 Democrats = health frame Republicans = jobs frame 16

18 We see initially with the first question of whether voters perceive the war on women as real, the frames have little to no direct effect relative to one another and to the control. Health frame is slightly higher, followed by jobs, but only by a few points Perceptions do not change between three different conditions 17

19 Dems: Few points higher in frames compared to control condition, highest in health frame (58%) for real response most likely to say myth in jobs frame most uncertain in control Ind: No effect for real response Reps: Interestingly, 5 point increase between control and jobs frame AND 6 point diff between heath and jobs frames less likely to say myth in jobs frame 18

20 Women: 41% across the board, don t move in either frame from control slightly less likely to say myth in D frame, slightly more likely in R frame Men: More likely to say war real in D frame, and somewhat more likely in R frame also less likely in both frames to say myth than in control 19

21 Not surprisingly, these small differences are not significant in when we perform a logistic regression to predict whether or not the respondent says the war is real Women are more likely than men, however, and Dems are more likely than Rs to say it s real 20

22 Only asked of those voters who said it was real in any condition in the first place 21

23 Overwhelmingly, most hold Republicans responsible for War on Women: Dems most likely to do so, Republicans much more mixed in who to blame, and women surprisingly less likely than men 22

24 Looking at this among all voters who answered the question by frame, we see an interesting decline in this overwhelming Republican blame in the Republican jobs frame 74% versus 87% in the control and 82% in the Dem health frame 23

25 Running logistic regression, the main effects model indeed shows a significant and negative effect at the.10 level for the Republican jobs frame blame toward Republicans is dampened among those given the jobs frame Mixing in party as an interaction with the frames shows that Inds in both frames are less likely to blame Republicans compared to Dems as the baseline group Dependent Variable: 0=Other 1=Republicans Control variables: Party, ideology, gender, education, race, age, income, religion, married With interactions for both party and gender, health frame becomes significant in terms of adding more blame to Republicans, Inds significant again in both frames for less blame compared to Dems as baseline, and now women actually show less blame toward GOP in health frame 24

26 Health frame: GOP blame goes down among Ind compared to Dems in Party Interaction Model Overall, increases blame for GOP but NOT significant in Party Interaction Model Goes up in party/gender interaction model Jobs frame: GOP blame goes down overall in main effects model GOP blame goes down among Ind compared to Dems in both interaction models GOP blame goes down among in the women and health frame interaction in Model 3 25

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28 In general, across all voters, partisans, men, and women, war on women not very influential to vote Dems most likely to say very influential or somewhat influential, followed by women Majority of almost every division here most likely to say that the war on women was not influential at all especially so among Republicans 27

29 Frames do not affect number who say very influential at all Frames do seem to affect number who say somewhat influential D frame has somewhat influential responses up by 6 points and not influential at all responses down by 9 points 28

30 In an OLS model with all voters, the health frame moves voters albeit a small amount in a positive direction toward influence It also surprisingly moves men in a positive direction a significant amount in a model that just looks within men No effect in a model just among women Dem model shows positive effect 29

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32 The frames have no immediate effect on whether voters believe the war on women to be real, though this overall lack of influence on the surface is expected; in real life, during the time period in which this experiment was conducted, these frames were competing with one another throughout the campaign and doing so with varying degrees of success. These frames instead influence different subgroups at different times, in different directions and by different magnitudes. While they do not significantly change whether voters see the war on women as fact or fiction, the frames do have a significant yet differing impact over which party receives the blame for it and how much influence the war on woman purportedly had over the individual s final vote choice. More specifically, the Republican Party was able to deflect responsibility for waging the war on women for those voters who were first primed with the jobs frame suggesting that the usage of this counterargument by Romney and other Republicans during the actual campaign may have dampened or at least had the potential to dampen some of the blame they received when Democrats initially framed the war on women as a Republicanwaged battle over reproductive health, rights, and anti-violence. In contrast, the positive significance of the health frame in the retrospective influence question implies that the Democratic reproductive health and rights version of the war on women argument ultimately had a greater influence on the 2012 presidential vote (presumably producing a greater likelihood of voting for Obama) than the Republicans jobs counterargument across all voters in the sample, as well as specifically among men and Democrats. Therefore, the jobs frame may shift blame away from Republicans, but the health frame seems to have a significant effect on actual electoral outcomes. The latter frame, moreover, not only increases the likelihood that the war on women debate influenced an individual s vote across the entire sample, but it also increases it specifically among men, whose votes may not otherwise be as influenced by or who may usually be averse to women s issues during an election cycle. Broader implications for the acceptance and support of women s rights at the mass level; the incorporation, prevalence, and successful usage of women s issues in elections and policymaking at the elite level; and the continual investigation of both the gender gap and the partisan gap and how each of these may fluctuate based upon what issues are made most salient in the decision-making process, which is the objective of the frames in this survey experiment. This research furthermore follows and builds upon the framing literature by showing how different frames, based on differing manipulations of issue salience, can differently affect subsequent perceptions and opinions. This research also adds to the existing literature the assertion that partisans as well as other key 31

33 demographics like gender may be more susceptible to issues they would not traditionally support when framed within their own values and arguments. 31

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