- New polling on the race for governor finds that beliefs about traditional gender roles are significantly shaping who likely voters support.

The survey from Fairleigh Dickinson University revealed that voters who embrace masculinity norms overwhelmingly back Republican Jack Ciattarelli, 88 to 11%, while people with less traditional views favor Democrat Mikey Sherrill by wide margins.

The findings suggest that even today, female candidates still walk a tightrope in proving they belong in executive leadership roles.

Joining us to go through the data and what it means for this election is FDU poll director and professor Dan Casino.

Dan, always great to talk to you.

So let me just start with what led your team to focus on gender role attitudes within this gubernatorial election specifically.

Well we have seen that there is this long term bias against female candidates running for executive office.

And a lot of what we've heard this year from Democrats especially has been a fear that women just are not electable, especially after what happened last year in New Jersey with Donald Trump getting very close to taking the electoral votes from here in New Jersey.

And so we want to dig into exactly why that might be.

Why is it that even in 2025 people would say that women aren't electable?

And especially given the experience of the United States in not electing women, what is it exactly that's driving it?

Because we don't think it's the same sort of gutter old-fashioned sexism we used to see, where voters say that they just wouldn't vote for a woman.

We don't see that anymore.

So any sexism, anything that's stopping women from winning in these roles for executive offices has to be something a little more subtle.

And we have to dig into really just gender rather than just looking at sexism.

So then explain how you did the experiment.

You played messages from Mikey Sherrill that emphasized her role as what as as a mom as a former Navy pilot.

How did it work.

So what we did for each candidate what we did is we actually exposed response the poll to three different statements and randomly selected from a total of five statements or traits about that candidate so for Jack Ciattarelli it was things like he's a lifetime New Jersey resident or he is against offshore wind construction and for Mikey Sherrill it was a combination of policy views as well as one trait that was considered to be anti-traditional femininity that she was a Navy helicopter pilot and one that was in line with traditional notions of what women are supposed to do, that she's a mother of four.

And so we wanted to see how a gender typical and a gender atypical message would wind up impacting how people felt about Sherrill.

And what we found was that when you give people the gender typical message that she's a mother of four, it increases her favorability by about half a point on a ten point scale.

When you give the gender atypical message, it has much more mixed results.

It actually makes her more popular among people who are less gender conforming themselves, who don't value gender conformity, but makes her less popular, especially among older women who have more traditional gender identity views.

Okay.

And then were those voter attitudes concentrated in specific demographics, age, gender, the like?

Yeah.

So one of the other things we did on this poll that we do on most of our surveys is we actually ask people to describe their own masculinity and femininity.

Normally polls just break people down by men versus women and we find that that doesn't really get at the real differences that are arising in electoral politics today.

We have to look at how traditional people consider themselves to be before we can understand exactly how they are evaluating the candidates.

So we find that people who have more traditional gender identities themselves, who say that they're completely masculine or completely feminine if they're women, they are actually much less likely to support Democratic candidates, especially if those Democratic candidates are women.

And that holds up even when we're looking within parties.

So it's certainly the case, for instance, that Republicans have much more traditional views about gender and hold more traditional gender identities themselves.

But even among Republicans, even among Democrats, the more traditional you are, the more likely you are to reject a female candidate for high office.

And so then what does that say, Dan, just about the complexity of these reactions?

I mean, it's just it's not exactly black and white.

It certainly isn't.

And because there are people who like it when candidates reject traditional gender roles, there is a market for that.

But what we're really seeing in this race, as in basically every race where women are running for executive office, is that women have a much higher bar to clear than men do.

Women candidates, female candidates, really have to show that they are feminine, that they are feminine enough to be likable, because when someone's more feminine, she is considered more likable, but also masculine enough in order to be taken seriously as a leader.

And men are assumed to be masculine, and they don't have to demonstrate that they're feminine at all.

So female candidates have this much higher bar.

It's like Ginger Rogers.

They wind up having to do everything backwards and in high heels.

What she did well.

How does the gender divides then compare to what we've seen in past election cycles here in New Jersey.

But also I'm thinking nationally.

And you alluded to that at the top of the conversation.

And I'm thinking as far back as not just 2024 the presidential matchup but even 2016.

I even go back to 2008 looking at this in our polling.

And what we've seen is that there's actually been movement between parties.

That is when we started doing this sort of research around 2008 when Hillary Clinton was first running for president the Democratic primary.

We found that there was a lot of them.

There were a lot of Democrats who had very traditional views about gender and a lot of Republicans who had less traditional views.

And we've seen over the almost 20 years since Hillary Clinton first ran for president in 2008, was that those views have really polarized.

The Republican Party has become much, much more traditional when it comes to ideas about gender.

And the Democratic Party has become much less traditional.

And that sort of polarization means that you do wind up with a real disadvantage for women running for office of the Democratic Party because it's so much harder for them to attract votes from the Republican Party from Republicans.

Very quickly are there any challenges or opportunities here then for the candidates given this data set?

Well given this data this we are seeing that being non-traditional some of female candidate like Sherrill claiming masculinity by talking about her military background doesn't necessarily help her but only among certain demographics and it does mean that these candidates have to be very careful to tailor their appeals to exactly who they're trying to reach.

Fairleigh Dickinson University's Dan Cassino.

Good to talk to you as always.

Fascinating poll.

Thanks for sharing it with us.

Thanks for having me.