Digiday Research: Agency men and women see the big 2020 election issues very differently

This research is based on unique data collected from our proprietary audience of publisher, agency, brand and tech insiders. It’s available to Digiday+ members. More from the series →

Most men working at ad agencies see the economy and the environment as the two defining issues of the 2020 election season. For women, the picture is a little more complicated, despite both sets of respondents identifying as overwhelmingly liberal, according to Digiday Research.

A Digiday survey of 72 agency professionals found more than 60% of the survey’s male respondents listed the economy, and 50% listed the environment as top issues. More than a third of the men included coronavirus response in their lists.

By contrast, the top priorities for women were more spread out. Respondents were asked to choose their three most important issues out of a list of 14; none of the issues was named by a majority of the women who took the survey. The most commonly cited one, social justice, was on 41% of female respondents’ lists.

Just as agency and publisher professionals differed sharply in their view of the election’s top issues, there were significant disparities in how male and female agency professionals viewed most of the survey’s choices. More than a quarter of the women ranked gun policy among their top issues, but less than ten percent of the men did. Social justice, which more than 40% of women cited as a top issue, was named a top issue by around a quarter of men. 

The two groups had more in common when it came to the issues they named the least. Both taxes and immigration were cited by fewer than 9% of respondents, and similarly slim percentages of male (13%) and female (9%) respondents cited economic inequality as a top issue.

These big gaps belied the strong similarities in each groups’ political leanings. Significant majorities of both male and female respondents identified themselves as liberal, and identical shares of both groups identified themselves as conservative.  

https://digiday.com/?p=380993

More in Marketing

Hyve Group buys the Possible conference, and will add a meeting element to it in the future

Hyve Group, which owns such events as ShopTalk and FinTech Meetup, has agreed to purchase Beyond Ordinary Events, the organizing body behind Possible.

Agencies and marketers point to TikTok in the running to win ‘first real social Olympics’

The video platform is a crucial part of paid social plans this summer, say advertisers and agency execs.

Where Kamala Harris and Donald Trump stand on big tech issues

The next U.S. president is going to have a tough job of reining in social media companies’ dominance and power enough to satisfy lawmakers and users, while still encouraging free speech, privacy and innovation.