[Margie Omero is President of Momentum Analysis, a Democratic polling firm based in Washington, DC.]
Gender played a huge role in the Iowa caucuses yesterday...on the Republican side. Mike Huckabee's sizable lead over Mitt Romney came largely from women. According to exit polls from both the Democratic and Republican caucuses, 40% of women voted for Huckabee and 24% for Romney. Among men, Huckabee and Romney are nearly tied (29% and 26%, respectively). The full breakdown is below, with the difference between the candidates' share across gender in the right-most column (results from the exit poll may differ from final delegate totals):
In the Democratic caucus, the pattern is far less dramatic. Yes, Clinton does fare better with women than she does with men. This is likely because of turnout efforts by EMILY's List and the Clinton campaign to bring more women to caucus for the first time. She fared much better than Edwards among first-time caucus goers, although not as well as Obama, who also fought to increase new turnout (among first-timers: 41% Obama, 29% Clinton, 18% Edwards). Ultimately, Obama bested Clinton across gender. Below is the full breakdown from the Democratic caucus:
One pattern emerges in both parties' caucuses: men are more likely to vote for second-tier candidates than are women. In the Democratic caucus, 19% of men and 13% of women voted for someone other than Obama, Edwards and Clinton. In the Republican caucus, 55% of men and 64% of women voted for Huckabee or Romney. Even when we control for this pattern, there is still a larger gender gap on the Republican side than on the Democratic side, as in the table below:
These results suggest that on the Democratic side, voters are more complicated than pundits predicted. They've been quick to assume that women will automatically vote for Clinton, and men will automatically vote against her. On the Republican side, the gender gap could reflect other differences between Romney's and Huckabee's base of support-religiosity, dissatisfaction with Bush, and socio-economic status are all viable hypotheses. But Iowa also confirms that women have the ability to decide an election, even if both candidates turn out to be men.