Scholars have focused on elite-level and mass-level changes to explain partisan polarization in Congress. This article offers a candidate entry explanation for the persistence of polarization and the rise in asymmetric polarization. The central claim is that ideological conformity with the party-what I call Party Fit-influences the decision to run for office, and I suggest that partisan polarization in Congress has discouraged ideological moderates in the pipeline from pursuing a congressional career. I test this hypothesis with a survey of state legislators and with ideology estimates of state legislators who did and did not run for Congress from 2000 to 2010. I find that liberal Republican and conservative Democratic state legislators are less likely to run for Congress than those at the ideological poles, though this disparity is especially pronounced among Republicans. The findings provide an additional explanation for recent patterns of polarization in Congress. This article contributes to the polarization literature by offering a candidate entry explanation that highlights ideological variation in the types of candidates who run for Congress.The central claim is that ideological conformity with the party's ideological reputation-what I call Party Fit-influences the decision to run for office. A party's ideological reputation conveys information about the type of candidate that belongs in the party, and potential candidates draw on this reputation to determine if they can achieve their electoral and policy goals and to decide whether to run for office. The Party Fit hypothesis suggests that in the contemporary political context, partisan polarization in Congress has discouraged ideological moderates in the political pipeline from pursuing a congressional career. I test this hypothesis with survey data of the perceptions of state legislators (Maestas et al. 2006;Stone et al. 2004) article focuses on the self-selection mechanism. However, the argument does not preclude a role for parties, and it is likely that party recruitment also shapes perceptions of Party Fit. In addition, the theoretical expectations apply to both incumbent and non-incumbent candidates, but because replacement processes have been central to the rise in polarization, I focus on the latter, and more specifically, on non-incumbents who are well situated to run for Congress.There are many reasons to expect that potential candidates rely on the party's reputation to determine if they can achieve their electoral and policy goals (Fenno 1973; Mayhew 1974). 3 First, potential candidates draw on this reputation to estimate their likelihood of winning. Sniderman and Stiglitz (2012) show that candidates receive a reputational premium if they take a 3 Potential candidates can learn about the party's reputation through a variety of ways, such as polls, the media, and past candidates, but the ideological makeup of the party delegation is the best measure of the party's reputation. What is important is that this reputation provides diffe...

Why So Few (Republican) Women? Explaining the Partisan Imbalance of Women in the U.S. Congress This article examines why the percentage of Democratic women in Congress has increased dramatically since the 1980s while the percentage of Republican women has barely grown. The central claim is that ideological conformity with the party influences the decision to run for office, and I suggest that partisan polarization has discouraged ideological moderates in the pipeline from pursuing a congressional career. The findings have gendered implications because, first, Republican women in the pipeline have historically been to the left of their male counterparts, and second, there is a dearth of conservative women in the pipeline.

It is well known that women are underrepresented in the U.S. Congress, constituting only 19 percent of House members and 20 percent of Senators (Center for American Women and Politics [CAWP] 2016). However, there is also a distinct partisan skew in women's representation as the number of Democratic women in Congress far outpaces the number of Republican women. The disparity emerged in the 1992 "Year of the Woman" elections and continues to grow. In the current 114th Congress, women constitute 33 percent of the House Democratic caucus but only 9 percent of the Republican caucus (CAWP 2016). Recent scholarship rejects campaign finance as a cause of women's underrepresentation in Congress because women raise as much money as men running in similar races. However, we argue that the composition of the parties' electoral coalitions and the candidate-centered nature of campaign fundraising make it easier for particular candidates to run.This article provides the first in-depth examination of the gender of campaign donors giving itemized individual donations. We use a unique dataset that includes primary and general election candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2010 and 2012 to examine the gender composition of candidates' donor networks. Analyzing both successful and failed primary challenger, open seat, and incumbent candidates provides a better picture of the gender and partisan differences in the donor networks of male and female candidates. Given the increasing polarization of Congress and the research consensus that donors are more extreme than average voters, we also pay special attention to candidate ideology. Rather than inferring the preferences of donors through the aggregate activity of women's political action committees (PACs), we track the total amount of donations candidates receive from male and female donors.In line with previous research, we find that the ideological views of candidates are important to individual donors. Moreover, donors exhibit a gender affinity effect that is especially strong among Democrats, with female donors favoring Democratic women and male donors more likely to give to Democratic men. Furthermore, Democratic female donors appear to value the election of AbstractRecent scholarship rejects campaign finance as a cause of women's underrepresentation in Congress because women raise as much money as men running in similar races. We argue that campaign finance still impacts which women can make a run for office because candidates have to build their own donor networks. Using a unique dataset that includes primary and general election candidates for the U.S. House in 2010 and 2012, we examine the gender composition of candidates' donor networks. We find that candidates' ideological views are very important to contributors. Donors, particularly Democrats, also exhibit a gender affinity effect in which men give more to male candidates and women favor female candidates. Furthermore, female Democratic donors seem to value the election of women, especially liberal Democrati...

A growing body of research shows that women legislators outperform their male counterparts in the legislative arena, but scholars have yet to examine whether this pattern emerges in non-policy aspects of representation. We conducted an audit study of 6,000 U.S. state legislators to analyze whether women outperform or underperform men on constituency service in light of the extra effort they spend on policy. We find that women are more likely to respond to constituent requests than men, even after accounting for their heightened level of policy activity. Female legislators are the most responsive in conservative districts, where women may see the barriers to their election as especially high. We then demonstrate that our findings are not a function of staff responsiveness, legislator ideology, or responsiveness to female constituents or gender issues. The results provide additional evidence that women perform better than their male counterparts across a range of representational activities.

The leading explanation for the underrepresentation of women in American politics is that women are less likely to run for office than men, but scholars have given less attention in recent years to the gender makeup of the pipeline to elected office. We examine the gendered pipeline to power across three potential candidate pools: lower-level officeholders, those named in newspapers as likely candidates, and lawyers who made political contributions. We find some evidence that women are less likely to seek elected office; however, the dearth of women in the pipeline plays a much greater role in the lack of women candidates. For the gender disparity in candidates to close, women have to be far more likely to run for office than men, particularly on the Republican side. Our results highlight the need to consider the gendered pipeline to power alongside rates of entry in studies of women’s underrepresentation.