Look Whos Talking

I was curious whether there was a significant different between the use of a male or female voice in the narration of a political advertisement. 

I did some research and found an academic paper from 2011 entitled 'In a Different Voice?  Explaining the Gender of Voiceover Announcers in Political Advertising.'

The paper reveled that:

• Men and women identify with the speaker in the ad
• Women find women‘s voices more persuasive, less negative, more fair, and more informative than men do
• Elite gender differences in campaign advertising are driven by context rather than sex/gender
• Women found an ad on a women‘s issue more persuasive, believable, fair, attention-grabbing and informative than men found the same ad 

There was also an article on The Daily Beast that found:

In the old days, most people considered a man's voice to be more authoritative and believable, and it can be." Now, more and more candidates have turned to women reading the scripts because they often have calmer and more credible voices. A lot of voters will say to themselves, 'Well, if a nice-sounding woman is saying this to me, it must be true'.

Data from the 2008 election was also used in the Daily Beast article:

Obama campaign has used female voices in six of the 39 ads it's posted on its Web site. McCain's list of spots feature female voices in 13 out of 41

I'll now be paying more attention to the voice, tone and gender of all the political ads for the current election.  I wonder if Obama is using female voices more frequently than he did in 2008?