Gender Preferences and Primary Candidates

• In Event: Gender, Race, and Sexuality in Elections

Abstract

Women now constitute 27.9 percent of the US Congress, the progress in women’s representation, however, has not been uniform across the parties. Democratic women are 12-13 percentage points more likely to win primaries than Republican women, in open seats and as challengers. Although candidate gender, as a heuristic, is trumped by party affiliation in general elections, this may not be the case in primaries where partisanship no longer acts as a deciding force. Yet, the role of partisanship – the most prominent socio-political identity in contemporary America – has received little attention. By viewing partisanship as a social identity, I argue that women candidates do not fit within the prototype of Republican leadership. I hypothesize that the lack of ‘fit’ that surround the candidacy of Republican women affect their ‘partisan credibility’ and skews representation. This research project tests whether voters in the Democratic party and the Republican Party view male and female political leaders differently, and whether there is a preference for male candidates among the Republican voters. The study employs a conjoint experiment to test whether there is a gender bias when selecting a preferred candidate in a primary. The research design allows for candidate gender and gender-related inferences to come through the participants’ vote choices and thereby find the imbalance in representation. Preliminary results suggest that while gender may not affect support for the candidate directly, it may affect credibility.

Author

• Asha Venugopalan, Stony Brook University