Why So Few Women and Minorities in Local Politics?: Incumbency and Affinity Voting in Low Information Elections

McGregor, R. Michael; Moore, Aaron A.; Jackson, Samantha; Bird, Karen; Stephenson, Laura B.

doi:10.1080/00344893.2017.1354909

Cited by 22 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 48 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Second, local politics is typically more removed from domestic or transnational women's movements, which often provide support for women candidates running for national office (Tripp, Casimiro, Kwesiga, & Mungwa, 2008). Finally, voters in local elections may be less influenced by partisanship and other cues and more concerned with personal characteristics in making their vote choice (McGregor, Moore, Jackson, Bird, & Stephenson, 2017). These factors may explain the general electoral disadvantage women candidates experienced in Malawi's most recent local elections.…”

Section: The Context: Malawi's Local Electionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

(How) Do Voters Discriminate Against Women Candidates? Experimental and Qualitative Evidence From Malawi

Clayton

Robinson

Johnson

et al. 2019

Comparative Political Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

How do voters evaluate women candidates in places where traditional gender norms are strong? We conduct a survey experiment in Malawi to assess both whether citizens discriminate against women candidates and how other salient candidate characteristics—political experience, family status, policy focus, and gendered kinship practices—interact with candidate gender to affect citizen support. Contrary to our expectations, we find citizens prefer women candidates ceteris paribus, and women and men with the same traits are evaluated similarly. Yet, we find two unexpected ways women candidates are disadvantaged in the electoral process. First, we find that citizens prefer candidates who are married with young children, a profile much more common among men than women candidates in practice. Second, we find pervasive qualitative reports of negative campaigning that likely affected citizens’ evaluations of actual women candidates, while not affecting evaluations of hypothetical candidates. We discuss how our results speak to the ways gender biases operate in practice across political contexts.

show abstract

Section: The Context: Malawi's Local Electionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

(How) Do Voters Discriminate Against Women Candidates? Experimental and Qualitative Evidence From Malawi

Clayton

Robinson

Johnson

et al. 2019

Comparative Political Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In the regression models, we adjusted for other demographic factors assumed to influence incumbency effects and voting behavior, such as the gender, age, race, education level, and religious denomination of the respondent (McGregor et al, 2017; Sheffer, 2021). We included fixed effects for years and Congressional districts (House) or states (Senate) to adjust for unobserved heterogeneity between districts/states and between election years.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is There an Ideological Asymmetry in the Incumbency Effect? Evidence From U.S. Congressional Elections

Morisi

Jost

Panagopoulos

et al. 2021

Social Psychological and Personality Science

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The electoral advantage that incumbent legislators enjoy over challengers in the U.S. Congress has been investigated extensively in political science. Very few studies, however, have considered the role of individual differences when it comes to incumbency preferences among voters. Based on theory and research in political psychology, we hypothesized that political conservatives would exhibit stronger preferences than liberals for incumbents over challengers from the same party. Extensive analyses based on more than 150,000 voters from seven election cycles in the United States from 2006 to 2018 support this hypothesis. A significant effect of conservatism on incumbency preferences was observed in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, and it was not attributable to Republican Party identification. This ideological asymmetry is consistent with system justification theory and prior research linking conservatism to risk aversion and status quo bias. Practical implications and directions for future research are discussed.

show abstract

“…Put differently, the argument implies that once women are sufficiently represented, they are equally likely to benefit from the incumbency advantage, but becoming the incumbent is harder for women than for men. The results reported by McGregor et al speak in favor of this explanation, as they indicate that “[f]emale candidates perform very well in wards with a female incumbent candidate, but men and women are equally likely to support female candidates in these settings” (2017, 142). Similar results are reported by Allik (2015) for the case of Estonia.…”

Section: Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effect of Electing Women on Future Female Candidate Selection Patterns: Findings from a Regression Discontinuity Design

2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In this article, we address the question of how electing women to national or subnational parliaments affects future female candidate selection in an open-list proportional representation system, using the example of Poland. We consider three potential effects of electing a woman. First, based on existing theories of the incumbency advantage, elected women should have higher chances of reselection and reelection in future elections (incumbency effect). Second, as a result of becoming more powerful within their party, elected women might have a stronger influence on future list composition, and thus more women should run for office on these lists (empowerment effect). Finally, we argue that other parties might adjust their candidate selection patterns in response to the election of women on other party lists (contagion effect). We find strong evidence for the incumbency effect and some support for the contagion effect. The empowerment hypothesis, however, finds no empirical support.

show abstract

Why So Few Women and Minorities in Local Politics?: Incumbency and Affinity Voting in Low Information Elections

Cited by 22 publications

References 48 publications

(How) Do Voters Discriminate Against Women Candidates? Experimental and Qualitative Evidence From Malawi

(How) Do Voters Discriminate Against Women Candidates? Experimental and Qualitative Evidence From Malawi

Is There an Ideological Asymmetry in the Incumbency Effect? Evidence From U.S. Congressional Elections

The Effect of Electing Women on Future Female Candidate Selection Patterns: Findings from a Regression Discontinuity Design

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About