In a recent post I discussed the astounding 31 point gender gap between men and women on the marijuana legalization question. Chris Ingraham left this comment:
I’d note that in the exit polls of the most recent ballot measures on marijuana in FL, OR, and AK, the gender gap on support for those measures was much, much smaller – in the neighborhood of 5 points or so. I’d be hesitant to draw too many conclusions from a survey conducted two years ago.
Florida looked at a slightly different question (medical marijuana) and both DC and Alaska are unusual “states.” So I dug up the Oregon exit polls, which show that Chris is right. Men favored legalization 58 to 42 while women favored legalization by 52 to 48, a gap of 6 or 12 points, depending on how it’s measured.
So unfortunately my previous post on this topic seems to have been based on false information. There probably is a gap, but it’s not that large. It’s certainly wrong to generalize by saying “women oppose legalization.” They split pretty evenly, especially if you assume the national figures would be a couple points lower for legalization, as compared to liberal Oregon.
Update: Commenter Steve breaks it down by married and unmarried. The gender gap in Alaska is all in the unmarried, and is slightly larger for the unmarried in Oregon.