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The ‘New Right' Vote: An Analysis of the Gender Gap in the Vote Choice for the SVP
Author(s) -
Fontana MarieChristine,
Sidler Andreas,
Hardmeier Sibylle
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
swiss political science review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.632
H-Index - 30
eISSN - 1662-6370
pISSN - 1424-7755
DOI - 10.1002/j.1662-6370.2006.tb00067.x
Subject(s) - relevance (law) , gender gap , order (exchange) , political science , focus (optics) , psychology , demographic economics , positive economics , economics , law , physics , optics , finance
Studying the Swiss national elections 2003, we find a pronounced gender gap in the SVP vote ‐ women are significantly less likely to vote for this party than are men. In order to explain this gender gap, this article combines two innovative approaches. On the one hand, it links the literature on gender gaps with research on the New Right. On the other, it makes a distinction between the conditional and compositional effects of explanatory factors. Our analysis reveals that conditional effects are of greater relevance than compositional ones. Explanatory factors regularly applied in research on the New Right have a conditional effect inasmuch as they only have an effect on male voters, but cannot explain the behaviour of women. This, in turn, also highlights the importance of a gender‐specific focus for further research.