Women’s Increasing Relative Social Status and Men’s Vote for Trump

'Angry White Men’ have been long seen as a politically radicalizing group because of their declining relative social status. Yet, there is little evidence for the impact of real changes in women’s socio-economic status on gender gaps in voting behavior. In this paper, I investigate the association between the local decline in men’s real social status (relative to women) and their vote for Donald Trump in 2016. Following the social status threat hypothesis, I expect men to vote more often for Trump where their relative status declined the most. This should be particularly true for white men without college education. I use county-level data on gender gaps in median income, labor force participation, and college education, as well as share of women among managers to operationalize changes in women’s and men’s relative social status. I combine them with county-level electoral data and a large-scale electoral survey to apply multi-level models. Contrary to the expectations, I do not find any evidence supporting the hypothesis that that men are more likely to vote for Trump in places where their relative status declined the most.