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Commenter Floccina sent me the following interesting finding, from Michele Martinez Campbell:

A fascinating new national poll from Quinnipiac University shows that men and women disagree markedly on the question of marijuana legalization. While men surveyed strongly favor legalization by a margin of 59 to 36 percent, women oppose it by a clear majority of 52-44 percent. This 15-point gender gap in support for marijuana legalization -let’s call it the “pot gender gap” “” is not quite as large as the 20-point gender gap in support for President Obama in the 2012 presidential election, but it is striking. What’s most interesting, though, is how it confounds the expectations set by the voting gender gap. In voting, women trend more liberal and Democratic, while men trend more conservative and Republican. Yet with the pot gender gap, we see women taking the more conservative, law-and-order approach.

I was a bit puzzled by this claim, as those numbers seem to indicate a 31 point gender gap, the way I usually calculate the gap. There is an alternative method that would yield a 15 point gap. However when you follow the link to the supposedly larger 2012 election gender gap, you get the following, from Jeffrey Jones:

PRINCETON, NJ — President Barack Obama won the two-party vote among female voters in the 2012 election by 12 points, 56% to 44%, over Republican challenger Mitt Romney. Meanwhile, Romney won among men by an eight-point margin, 54% to 46%. That total 20-point gender gap is the largest Gallup has measured in a presidential election since it began compiling the vote by major subgroups in 1952.

That uses the approach I am more familiar with. But by that approach, the drug gap is actually 31%, which makes the drug legalization gender gap far larger than the biggest presidential election gender gap ever recorded. A 31 point gap is mind-boggling by itself, but it’s even more astounding when you consider it reverses the normal liberal/conservative split between men and women. This fact would tell us a lot about politics, if we bothered to pay attention. Instead all you see in the media is endless generalizations about the left and the right, as if the views of African-Americans on social issues, for instance, could be understood simply by noting the fact that they tend to vote Democratic. People are really complicated.

NarcoLaw’s best guess (an informed guess, but a guess nevertheless) is that female opposition stems from questions about the impact legalization will have on public health, crime and the social fabric.

I think the health/social fabric worries are wrong—but defensible. But the crime argument isn’t even defensible. Of course that’s just one person’s “best guess,” it would be interesting to get better data. Why isn’t this issue being intensively studied? What are the gender gaps on government invasion of privacy (TSA/NRA/CIA, etc?) What is the gender gap on immigration? I have no idea what the gap is on many of the most important issues facing our country, and no reason to think it correlates in any particular way with how each gender votes. (Democratic pols are supposedly more likely to support legalization.–but is even that true? Is there any data?)

BTW, I have many commenters in both the liberal and conservative camps. But they almost all seem to favor drug legalization. And I’d guess over 90% are male. There are entire realms of our political reality that are almost invisible in the blogosphere.

PS. There are also some big gender gaps in academics, which are just as perplexing as in drug legalization. For instance, women get higher grades in college, despite getting lower average scores on SATs. This might reflect some sort of difference in cognitive styles. Let me throw out a hypothesis (and feel free to scold me for sexism if appropriate.) Is it possible that men approach the issue from more of a “legalistic” perspective. I.e. “legalizing drugs doesn’t mean one endorses their use.” And women might approach the issue from a more “contextual” framework; “while legalization doesn’t necessarily endorse their use, it implicitly connotes the fact that society regards drug use as ‘OK’.” It seems to me that women are at least slightly more likely to say things like “so what you are really saying is . . .” Another thought is that men might be more individualistic; “no one can tell me what I can or cannot do,” whereas women might be more used to thinking in a social context; “how does this impact the family?” These might all be stereotypes on my part, but the gender gap is certainly very real; 31 points is way outside the margin of error for a public opinion poll. Marijuana is illegal in America mostly because women want it illegal. Just to be clear, I am not trying to pick on women here. My views on other issues like use of military force and reproductive rights are more “feminine” than masculine.

PPS. A gap that big cannot be accounted for by the fact that somewhat more men than women use illegal drugs. Or by the fact that women care more about children. Do dads want their sons to get addicted? And do moms really want their sons to go to prison?

PPPS. Off topic, I love this Sunstein post on Hayek.

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