The gender gap - updated
Way back in late 2011 I wrote about the gender gap in the polls, or more the point, the disappearing gender gap. At the time there was a lot of discussion in the newspapers about the Conservatives struggling with the female vote, but at the time it really wasn't that true. Or at least, it wasn't true in the way the media was reporting it - the Conservatives were not actually doing any worse amongst women than men... but that itself was a problem for them. Previously they had done better amongst women than men. In short, it wasn't that the Conservatives were suffering amongst female voters. It was that they were no longer doing disproportionately well amongst female voters.
Anyway, I have long meant to revisit that post and see if it has changed, and since we've not had any new polling for a few days I've finally got round to doing it. The graph below shows a four week rolling average of the Conservative lead over Labour in YouGov's Sunday Times polls (there is no methodological reason for just using the Sunday Times polls - it's just easier to collate 50 polls a year than 250)
Conservative lead over Labour in YouGov's Sunday Times polls
As you can see, while in late 2011 the Conservative deficit amongst women was actually much the same as amongst men, since then a small but consistent gender gap actually has developed, and Labour have enjoyed a bigger lead amongst women. As I wrote before, the reasons are unclear - most polling does not actually show very much contrast between the political views of men and women. They think the same issues are important and generally give similar answers, except on a few specific issues like military action, nuclear power and weapons and gay marriage (women are more anti-war, more opposed to nuclear power and weapons and more pro-gay marriage). My best guess remains, as it was in October 2011, that it is to do with perceptions of the economy, but that is purely because the big shift in the gap back in January 2011 coincided with a big drop in economic confidence.
