The Gender Gap in Voter Participation Narrows at the Top of the Educational Ladder

New data from the U.S. Census Bureau documents voter participation rates for the 2020 election cycle. Some of the data is broken down by gender and level of education.

Overall, 74.1 percent of all adult women in the United States were registered to vote in 2020. For men, the figure was 71.2 percent. Some 68.4 percent of all women voted in the 2020 election compared to 65.0 percent of men.

If we break down the data by education level, we find that women were more likely than men to register to vote and to cast ballots at all levels of education. But the gender gap narrowed significantly for those with a college education.

For those with some high school but no diploma, 53.3 percent of women were registered to vote compared to 48.1 percent of men. For those with a college degree, 81.9 percent of women and 81.2 percent of men were registered to vote.

For women who had some high school but did not graduate, 43.9 percent cast ballots in 2020. For men with some high school but no diploma, 39.3 percent actually cast their votes. For those with a bachelor’s degree, 78.4 percent of women and 77.3 percent of men actually voted.

For those with a graduate degree, 85.9 percent of women and 84.4 percent of men were registered to vote. 83.3 percent of women and 82,5 percent of men cast their ballots in the 2020 election.

More than 19.4 million adult women in the United States did not vote. This includes 756,000 women with a graduate degree and 2,163,000 women with a bachelor’s degree.