Will Americans Really Vote for a Woman President? Aggregate Gender Bias in the 2016 Presidential Election

Many individual-level studies were conducted on the 2016 American presidential election. Fewer analyses consider how aggregate context affected support for Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. We explore this issue, asking if Clinton’s vote share was smaller in counties with lower baseline hospitability toward women candidates; we find support for this proposition. This effect persists in counties won by Barack Obama in 2012 and Trump in 2016. These findings underscore the importance of both individual and aggregate analyses of election results.