Male and Female Party Images in Sweden

Abstract

This article is based on the 1991 Swedish Election Study and sets out to analyse gender differences in voting behaviour. To increase our understanding of the dynamics between the parties and women and men in the Swedish electorate, an analysis of gender‐based “party images” is undertaken. Party images refer to policy orientations and the analysis thereof is empirically based on three sets of open‐ended questions about the most dent issuer in the election. The main purpose is to investigate to what extent women and men who vote for the same party in an election. in their mind. have differing images of the party they cast their vote for. With large differences in party images it can be put into question if women and men vote for the “same” parties even if the party label is the same on the ballots they choose on election day. The results show that for the Social Democratic Party and the Conservative Party there was to a large extent an agreement between the male and female voters in their party images in the 1991 Swedish Election. This was also true for the Christian Democratic Party. Among women and men who voted for the other five parties analysed in the article, a larger degree of gender‐based disagreements in the party images was found.