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Gender and Voting Preferences in Japanese Lower House Elections

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 June 2003

GILL STEEL
GILL STEEL
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USAgsteel@alumni.uchicago.edu
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Abstract

This paper analyzes voter choice in selected House of Representatives elections during the past 30 years. I estimate multinomial probit models using data from the Akarui Senkyo Suishin Kyokai (Society for the Promotion of Clean Elections) surveys and use qualitative data gathered in focus groups. I argue that no gender gap exists in the votes garnered by the main parties because, first, influential people are not simply able to ‘deliver’ votes from their networks — most accounts of voter choice fail to discuss gender, an oversight considering that most networks are gender-based — and, second, ‘women's issues’ have no special relevance to women in their vote choice. Instead, women and men vote for the Liberal Democratic Party because they associate the Party with stability and increased standards of living, including substantial social provisions.

Type
Research Article
Information
Japanese Journal of Political Science , Volume 4 , Issue 1 , May 2003 , pp. 1 - 39
Copyright
© 2003 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

I presented portions of this paper at the Losing Faith in Politics Conference in 2000; the Midwest Political Science Association in 2001; and the American Political Science Association Meeting in 2001. I would like to thank the discussants and participants for helpful comments. I also thank Susan Stokes, John Brehm, and Bernard Silberman for very insightful comments on previous drafts.