Independent voters are more likely to oppose a female candidate than Democrats or Republicans, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor found in a new set of studies.

UW-Madison professor Barry Burden conducted two studies with a team of researchers to explore whether Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton suffered at the polls because she is a woman, and presented some of the results at a symposium held on Friday by the UW Elections Research Center.

Burden noted that while public polling in 2016 showed that more than 90 percent of voters said they would vote for a qualified woman in their own party, closer to 80 percent said they believed the country as a whole was ready for a woman to be president.

Burden and his research team sought to learn more about who was opposed to electing a female president. Included in their findings:

About 13 percent of people surveyed in early 2016 said the idea of having a woman serve as president made them upset.

Gender absolutely made a difference in those results: about 26 percent of men said the idea of a female president made them upset, while 0 percent of women felt that way.

About 27 percent of Republicans said the thought of a woman president made them upset. This was true of 3 percent of Democrats and 11 percent of independents.

When presented with many pairs of candidates with randomized attributes (age, marital status, etc.), respondents in a second study were 2.5 percent less likely to select the female candidate.

While men preferred male candidates, women did not show a significant preference for female candidates.

Independent voters penalized female candidates the most among party identifications, at about 3.5 percent. Burden said this is likely because Republicans and Democrats rely more on other partisan factors when selecting a candidate.

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