Education and the Gender Gap in U.S. Presidential Elections

September 2025

Women in the United States have outpaced men in both voter participation and educational attainment in recent decades. Since education is closely tied to political participation, we consider these trends in tandem and assess how much of the gender gap in voting is attributable to educational attainment as opposed to cognitive skills, noncognitive skills, college preparation behaviors, and demographics. Using comprehensive educational data from Massachusetts students matched with voter records, we estimate a Blinder–Oaxaca–Kitagawa decomposition to understand how these factors contribute to gender voting differentials. In our data, young women outvote young men by 5.8 percentage points in the first presidential election in which they can vote after having potentially completed college. We find that just under 50 percent of this gap in voting can be explained by differences in educational attainment and civic returns to attainment by gender. If we also consider gender differences in college preparation, we explain two-thirds of the gender gap in voting. These results suggest that a significant portion of the gender gap in voting can be attributed to the rise in women’s education.

Keywords

voting, political participation, gender gaps, educational attainment

Education level

Post-secondary education

Topics

Policy, Politics, and Governance