Women think U.S. would be better off with more women in office - CBS News poll
Most women say it's very important for more women to be elected to political office, and a majority think the country would be better off if that happened. Still, partisanship drives views on this.
Fifty-four percent of women say it's very important to them personally that more women are elected to office, compared to 39 percent of men who say that. Still, most men do say it's at least somewhat important. Majorities of both younger and older women think it's very or somewhat important to have more women in political office.
Nearly six in 10 women think the country would be better off if more women held office. Most men, however, don't think things would change much, though more than a third of men think things would improve.
Partisanship trumps gender on these measures. Three-quarters of women Democrats say it's very important to elect more women, a figure that drops to just about one in five among Republican women. Democratic women are also far more likely than Republican women to believe the country would improve with more women in political office.
A year into Donald Trump's presidency, most women (who are more likely to identify as Democrats, than Republicans) disapprove of his job performance. Half feel his policies have mostly hurt women.
Republican women, however, are far more supportive of President Trump. Eight in 10 approve of the job he is doing, and while few say they have been directly helped by his policies, most don't feel hurt by them either.
This poll was conducted by telephone January 13-16, 2018 among a random sample of 1,225 adults nationwide. Data collection was conducted on behalf of CBS News by SSRS of Glen Mills, PA. Phone numbers were dialed from samples of both standard land-line and cell phones.
The poll employed a random digit dial methodology. For the landline sample, a respondent was randomly selected from all adults in the household. For the cell sample, interviews were conducted with the person who answered the phone.
Interviews were conducted in English and Spanish using live interviewers. The data have been weighted to reflect U.S. Census figures on demographic variables.
The error due to sampling for results based on the entire sample could be plus or minus three percentage points. The error for subgroups may be higher and is available by request. The margin of error includes the effects of standard weighting procedures which enlarge sampling error slightly.
This poll release conforms to the Standards of Disclosure of the National Council on Public Polls.
