Story at a glance
- New Gallup poll findings show that 57 percent of Americans believe the country would be better run if more women held political office.
- Gallup began tracking Americans’ attitudes about women in politics in 1999 when the percentage of Americans who thought the country would be better off with more women in office was also 57 percent.
- The percentage of Americans who think the country would be worse off with more women in political office has risen 8 points since 1999 — from 14 to 22 percent.
A new Gallup poll published Friday shows 57 percent of American adults believe the country would be better governed if more women held political office.
That is the same percentage of Americans as in 1999 when Gallup first began tracking views on women in political office.
While that is an uptick in the number of Americans in 2019 who thought more women in political office would positively impact the country, it is still lower than a high of 63 percent in 2014, according to Gallup.
Younger adults, 18 to 34, and non-white adults were the most likely to believe that the U.S. would be better governed if more women held political office.
Another 22 percent of American adults think the country would be more poorly governed if more women held political office, while 21 percent either had no opinion or said it would make no difference.
The number of Americans who think the country would be governed more poorly if more women held political office has risen 8 percentage points since 1999 — from 14 to 22 percent.
While women’s representation in government is nowhere near matching the roughly 50 percent share of the United States adult population, the number of women in most levels of government has reached record highs.
Now, women comprise between a quarter and a third of elected leaders across all levels of government in the United States.
Nearly 30 percent of the U.S. House of Representatives, 25 percent of the Senate and 24 percent of all state governors are women — a record high at each level — according to the Center for American Women in Politics.
Women have been more likely than men to think the country would be better with more women in office, according to Gallup.
“But the gender gap has increased because women have become slightly more positive about women’s influence, while men have become less so,” Gallup said in a release accompanying the poll findings.
Now, 68 percent of women think the country would be better off with more women in political office, while 46 percent of men believe the same.
In 1999, 62 percent of women believed the U.S. would benefit from more women in office compared to 51 percent of men.
Americans’ opinions about women in political office gradually widened across political lines between 1999 and 2013 and began to differ more dramatically in 2014.
Now, 84 percent of Democrats say the country would be better off with more women in government compared to 32 percent of Republicans.
Gallup’s poll findings were based on telephone interviews conducted in early February of 1,016 adults living in all 50 states and Washington D.C.
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