Women's Vote during the 2016-2024 US Presidential Elections: Family roles, Employment, and Political Choice

When do family roles and economic interests shape political choice? Married women outside the labor force have become a reference point in American political discourse since 2016, yet whether they vote differently from married women in paid work, once their backgrounds are considered, has not been examined with contemporary data. Using the Cooperative Election Study for 2016, 2020 and 2024 (15,633 married women aged 25-60, of whom 4,122 identified as homemakers), we estimated the difference in Republican presidential vote between homemakers and employed married women, adjusting for age, race and education and, in supplemental analyses, for family income, children and religion. Homemakers were 5.9 percentage points more likely to vote Republican across the pooled elections after adjustment (3.5 points after further adjustment). The gap was 2.8 points in 2016, 4.9 in 2020 and 10.3 in 2024, and in 2024 it was concentrated almost entirely among mothers, at 11.9 points against 1.1 among women without a child at home. Demographic characteristics fixed before labor-force exit accounted for most of the unadjusted difference and partisanship for the remainder. Three further results bear on this interpretation. First, married men outside the labor force leaned in the opposite direction. Second, homemakers differed from employed wives on gender-role attitudes but not on abortion, moral traditionalism or affect toward the Republican party. Third, longitudinal 2020-2024 data showed negligible vote switching among women already at home. Homemakers were 12 points less likely to be validated voters in 2024 but this was fully accounted for by demographics, and non-voting homemakers were at least as Republican in intention as those who voted. The gap was more closely associated with beliefs about family and gender roles than with economic position. This is notable because policies supporting women's economic security, health and family well-being have in recent decades been more strongly associated with the Democratic platform. The findings suggest that homemakers and employed wives may place different weight on economic independence, family structure and other dimensions of family well-being when making political choices, challenging the idea that women vote as a unified political bloc.