Helping the Cause? The Effect of Female Top Candidate Nominations on Voters

• In Event: Advances in the Study of Gender and Politics

Abstract

What effect does nominating a female top candidate have on voters? While numerous studies investigate the effect of ordinary candidates, it is unclear how the nomination of female leading candidates affects women. We provide the first study that addresses this question by exploiting the nomination of Annalena Baerbock by the German Green Party as the party's top candidate in the 2021 election. This nomination provides a unique opportunity to identify the causal effect of a female leading candidate, as it was entirely unclear whether Annalena Baerbock or the Greens' male co-leader, Robert Habeck, would be nominated until the day of the announcement. By leveraging a survey among nearly 70,000 citizens in the field during the nomination, we shed light on how her nomination affected voters. The results show a positive impact of Baerbock's nomination for the Greens, but among women as well as men. We complement this analysis with a survey experiment among 9,000 respondents in Germany to investigate the underlying causal mechanisms. We find that there is a positive effect of nominating a female top-candidate instead of a man and that this is especially true for green and liberal parties. Our results have important implications for the debate on gender and politics.

Authors

• Heike Klüver, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

• Jae-Jae Spoon, University of Pittsburgh