Unit 3: Recommendations and Reflection

Task 1: Recommendations

The study shows that while there are more female democrats and more male republicans, there is no correlation between gender and political orientation. The study further shows that individuals cannot be viewed to be oriented to a certain party on the basis of their gender. There are various recommendations that can be made to the target audience of this report.

First, the voter turnout among male voters is too low. The politicians should target to ensure that their male voters were motivated to vote in future elections. Women voters are also more reliable voters as they will turnout in larger numbers compared to men. For this reason, the amount time spent selling policies and ideals to women is more wisely invested than that which is invested with men. It would therefore be advisable for both parties to campaign among women for more impact.

More men are republicans than democrats. On the other hand, women are mostly inclined to the Democratic Party. This implies that at the present, the parties have not fared well with the different genders. It is likely that the Democratic Party offers better policies that favor women in the Democratic Party (Gibson, Nixon & Ward, 2003). It may be for this reason that women have inclined to the party. On the other hand, men may feel favored by the promises of the Republican Party. The turnout however may be used to imply that men are unconvinced by whatever the two parties’ manifestos have to offer

Each of the parties should align their policies and manifestos to the favor of everyone in the population. Policies should also be equitable so as to offer growth without inclining on one gender. This way, the party will win other people into the party.

Task 2: Reflection

The study I did had a lot to learn. First, it showed that more people were inclined to the Democratic Party. More specifically, there are more women than men who come out to vote and most of them favor the Democratic Party. Second, more men favor the Republican Party. The turnout for men is poorer than the one for women. The difference in the political leanings is however not sufficient to imply that there is a correlation between gender and political affiliations. The political leanings fall outside the 0.05% confidence interval required for the study.

Before this study, I was of the opinion that the turnout for men was healthier than that of women. To my surprise, I found that the opposite is true. My opinion was biased by the tendency to find men being more political. It would therefore be expected that more men would vote than men. Probabilities are that men are help up at their jobs to the extent of not being able to find time to vote. Alternatively, men may prioritize other matters to voting (Rankin, 2012). It may also be probable that women get more attention during the campaign period to warrant the higher turnout.

I also did not expect that women would be more inclined to one party than the other. I expected that family influence would be sufficient to create a uniform voting pattern. The voting patterns however show that voting patterns are partly inclined by gender. The voting patterns may be so inclined based on the contents of the manifestos of the different parties. Women may embrace the change that is associated with the Democratic Party while men may be more conservative and hence the inclination towards the Republican Party.

Discussion

Data collection in this study may have been influenced by various factors. First, it may be possible that some individuals were unwilling to associate with the losing party. The Republican Party may therefore not have been treated fairly in this regard. There should have been measures to enable all participants an equal chance of providing the truth about their political affiliations.

Second, the number of people who declined to offer their opinion may have been useful to this study. There should have been a possibility of providing part of the information to show the distribution of the political inclinations with regard to gender. This would have enabled for the study to determine if the refusal to offer information was a sign of conservativeness (which is associated with republicans) (Maisel & Berry, 2010).

Another aspect that may have contributed to the fallibility of this paper is the nature of analysis. In regard to the turnout, the evidence presented may be insufficient. The mere fact that more women claimed to be voters does not imply that men do not vote.  It might have been an implication that more men did not want to contribute to the study.

In conclusion, the research paper I did had a few issues in the paper. The number of those people who declined to contribute to the study may have been important to the study. Second, untrue information may have been provided by those who did not want to be associated with the losing team. Thirdly, there were assumptions that failure to contribute implied lack of a political leaning.

References

Gibson, R., Nixon, P., & Ward, S. (2003). Political parties and the Internet. London: Routledge.

Maisel, L., & Berry, J. (2010). The Oxford handbook of American political parties and interest groups. Oxford: University Press.

Rankin, D. (2012). US politics and generation Y. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers.