Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump and gender insecurity in American politics

A simple experiment uncovered a surprising effect on politics of men's attitudes to masculinity

Hillary Clinton is now looking to the general election (AP)

It was a devastatingly simple experiment. Dan Cassino, professor of political science at Fairleigh Dickinson University, inserted a question in an opinion poll of voters in New Jersey. It asked married or cohabitating respondents if they earned more, less, or about the same as their spouses. Professor Cassino was not interested in the answer to the question. He was using it as a prompt to make respondents think about gender roles.

Merely asking it had a dramatic effect on men's answers to another question – namely, how they would vote if Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were the candidates in the presidential election. Men who were not asked the extra question preferred Ms Clinton over Mr Trump by a margin of 16 percentage points. But the men in the half of the sample who were randomly asked the spousal earnings question supported Mr Trump by a margin of 8 percentage points.

Professor Cassino concludes that "men were responding to a threat to their masculinity by saying they would prefer a man, rather than a woman, in a presidential race". He argues that this is because "being the breadwinner has been a linchpin of US men’s masculinity for decades, so even the potential of making less than one’s spouse threatens accepted gender roles".

If the Trump phenomenon were not alarming enough, this holds a depressing mirror to US society. And what is true of American attitudes to gender roles is undoubtedly true of Britain too.

At least we have had a woman prime minister in this country. One of the best ways to help shift American, Western and world attitudes towards equality would be for Ms Clinton to win in November.

Just as Barack Obama is allowed to have an opinion on our referendum, we are allowed one on their politics: we hope she wins.