Social context and gender gaps: how household and partner effects shape gender gaps in vote choice across the life-course.

Previous scholarly work examining gender and vote choice has noted that gender gaps in vote choice tend to be larger amongst younger men and women (e.g. Inglehart and Norris, 2000; Shorrocks, 2018; Van Ditmars, 2023), with younger women being generally more likely to vote for parties of the left than young men. A somewhat separate - until now - body of research in political science suggests that the social context of individuals is influential upon their vote choice, especially in the form of household and partner effects (e.g. Abou-Chadi and Kurer, 2021; Coffé and Need, 2010; Sipma et al., 2024), not just their individual characteristics. This work brings together these two literatures to understand how social context, in the form of household and partner effects, shapes gender gaps in vote choice across Europe. It makes the case that gender gaps are narrower in younger age groups due to social context. It first uses data from the European Social Survey to examine how partner characteristics, such as education level, influence gender gaps by cohort in vote choice across Europe. Then, using household data from the UK, Switzerland, and Germany, it examines the underlying causal mechanisms taking place within households that influence vote choice by following individuals as they transition into and out of different households with different partisan leanings. The paper closes by considering the implications of household and partner effects on the future of the modern gender gap and suggests that large gender gaps in some younger cohorts may narrow as men and women form households together during the life-course, although this trend may lessen if more women stay single.