The ‘New Right' Vote: An Analysis of the Gender Gap in the Vote Choice for the SVP

✍ Scribed by Marie-Christine Fontana; Andreas Sidler; Sibylle Hardmeier

• Publisher: Swiss Political Science Association
• Year: 2006
• Tongue: German
• Weight: 596 KB
• Volume: 12
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1420-3529
• DOI: 10.1002/j.1662-6370.2006.tb00067.x

✦ Synopsis

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.