Drawing upon the ‘satisfaction with democracy’ and ‘divisive primary’ literatures, this article examines how losers of intra-party elections respond to defeat and the consequences that these choices have on party organization and strength. In other words, do losers of intra-party elections continue to support the party or do they, like losers of general elections, feel less satisfied with democracy and withdraw their support (or even ‘exit’ the party)? Exploring rates of membership activism and satisfaction from a recent study of Canadian party members, this article demonstrates that losers of intra-party elections are more likely to exit the party, significantly less likely to remain active and engaged in party politics, and significantly more likely to report dissatisfaction with party membership. These findings suggest that parties must find a way of keeping losers engaged with the party.

Among the most well-documented and long-standing gender gaps in political behavior are those relating to political ambition, as men have consistently been shown to express a significantly higher level of political ambition than women. Although this gap is well established, the reasons for the differences between men and women remain largely unknown. One possible explanation is that negative stereotypes about women's political ability are responsible. Stereotype threat, as it is referred to in the psychology literature, is a phenomenon where individuals of a social group suffer cognitive burdens and anxiety after being exposed to negative stereotypes that relate to their identity. These disruptions have been shown to alter attitudes and behavior. In order to test this possibility, we employed an experimental design whereby we randomly assigned 501 undergraduate students into threat and nonthreat conditions. While men exhibited higher levels of political ambition in both conditions, women in the nonthreat condition expressed significantly higher levels of political ambition than those women who were exposed to negative stereotypes. The results of this study therefore suggest that the gender gap in political ambition may be partly explained by negative stereotypes about women in politics.

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This paper not only considers whether encouragement can be an effective tool for increasing political ambition, but it also asks whether the source of that encouragement matters. That is, are some sources of encouragement more credible and effective than others? In addition, it explores the profiles of those individuals who are most likely to be receptive to recruitment, accounting for factors such as age, gender, income, education, political interest, knowledge, and personality. To answer these questions, we conducted two studies. The first is a survey of eligible voters. We recruited 371 Canadians from a national panel, asking a variety of questions regarding their level of political ambition. Importantly, we uncover distinct profiles for men and women who are most likely to respond positively to encouragement. In the second study, we conducted an online experiment with 443 undergraduate university students. Here, we focus on the question of who is providing the encouragement as we manipulated the gender of the actor providing the encouragement to run for office. We find that women who are encouraged by a male party recruiter are significantly less likely to express interest in a political career than those in our gender-neutral control condition.