How unconscious sexism could help explain Trump's win

Two recent studies of voters, however, suggest that another, subtler form of bias may also have been a factor in the election. These studies looked at what’s known as “implicit bias,” the unconscious tendency to associate certain qualities with certain groups — in this case, the tendency to associate men with careers and women with family. Researchers have found that this kind of bias is stronger on average in women than in men, and, among women, it is particularly strong among political conservatives. And at least according to one study, this unconscious bias was especially strong among one group in 2016: women who supported Trump.

There is no way to know for sure how implicit gender bias affected voters’ behavior at the ballot box. Most women voters did support Clinton: She won among them by 14 percentage points, while Trump won among men by 12.5 percentage points, according to exit polls — the biggest gender gap on record in a presidential election. The impact of other kinds of implicit bias is disputed by researchers, and gender bias’s effect hasn’t been studied extensively.

But while quantifying the effect is difficult, experts said there is little doubt that gender bias — both explicit and implicit — played a role in the election.