In 1915, a neurologist said voting might drive women insane. We don't appear to have come that far since then.
They're ruled by hormones.
In an already-infamous story Wednesday (now removed from its website), CNN reported on research supposedly showing that women's ovulation cycles influence their voting behavior. Specifically, when they're most fertile, single women are more likely to vote for Obama and married women are more likely to vote for Romney. The reason: single women "feel sexier" when they're ovulating, so they vote for abortion rights and gay marriage, while married women are "overcompensating for the increase of the hormones motivating them to have sex with other men." The story has been widely pilloried. To be fair, though, CNN reporter Elizabeth Landau did include criticisms of the study in her writeup, like this rebuttal from political scientist Susan Carroll: "There is absolutely no reason to expect that women's hormones affect how they vote."
They're risking their sanity.
In a 1915 editorial in the New York Times, neurologist Charles Dana wrote that "there are qualities in the nervous system of woman that call for protection and make at least certain forms of aggressive and responsible life dangerous." "I am not saying that woman suffrage will make women crazy," he assured his readers — however, "I do say that woman suffrage would throw into the electorate a mass of voters of delicate nervous stability" and "add to our voting and administrative forces the biological element of an unstable preciosity which might do injury to itself without promoting the community's good."
They vote their shopping history.
Two polling firms, one leaning Democratic and the other Republican (bipartisan consensus!), believe that moms "who shop at Walmart at least once per month" are "truly swing voters." At least as of May, Walmart shopping was allegedly associated with qualities like being "jaded by the political process" and thinking "Washington is out-of-touch." However, another firm says independent female voters are actually more likely to shop at T.J. Maxx and Macy's.
Image by Eric Thayer / Reuters
They're searching for John Wayne (not Alan Alda).
ABC's Matthew Dowd claimed that while women "express a desire that they want what has been traditionally called the 'Alan Alda man,'" they really want a "John Wayne type." Obama was apparently too Alan-Alda-y in the first debate, while Romney allegedly came off as more John Wayne. Dowd's prescription for Obama was to toughen up, because "women want to be in a relationship with a man who is clear, strong, kind, knows where he is going, can stand up when confronted and can make a woman feel protected and safe."
Image by Theo Wargo / Getty Images
