From Gender Gap to Gender Gaps: Bringing Nonbinary People into Political Behavior Research

Abstract

The “gender gap” in voting is one of the most well-documented findings in survey research across democracies. However, gender gap research has traditionally assumed that everyone is either a man or a woman, which does not account for the growing number of people who identify as nonbinary. How do nonbinary people differ from men and women in their party identification and voting behavior? We answer this question using data from the 2021 Canadian Election Study online panel, which has a large enough subsample of nonbinary respondents to identify gaps in party identification and voting behavior. Nonbinary people are much less likely to identify with and vote for the Liberal Party or Conservative Party and much more likely to identify with and vote for the social democratic New Democratic Party (NDP) than both men and women. Many of these gaps persist even when restricting the analysis to LGBTQ respondents, adjusting for demographic variables that predict nonbinary identity, and adjusting for issue attitudes. Nonbinary people’s distinctiveness from men and women suggests that researchers need to add nonbinary response options to gender questions and, wherever possible, incorporate nonbinary people into analyses of gender and politics.