Women Candidates in Open-Seat Primaries for the U. S. House: 1968-1990

Women and Power: Unpopular, Unwilling, or Held Back?

“…Polls also show that voters tend to vote for candidates of their own gender ðPlutzer and Zipp 1996; Smith and Fox 2001Þ. However, the net effect of these findings on actual electoral results is unclear. Most of the literature in political science finds that female candidates who run for office tend to win at rates similar to those of males ðDarcy and Schramm 1977; Welch et al 1985;Burrell 1992;Gaddie and Bullock 1997;Fox and Oxley 2003Þ. Some papers claim that women candidates obtain fewer votes ðFrechette, Maniquet, and Morelli 2008Þ, while others find a net positive effect ðHogan 2010Þ.…”

Ballot Access Rules and the Entry of Women Candidates in State Legislative Primaries

“…Because women often have a more difficult time deciding to start their campaign than men do, they may not have the organizational capacity to pull together enough signatures early on to run for office. State elections tend to be harder for "self" starting candidates, because there is little interest in candidates until they win the primary (Burrell, 1992;Kazee& Thornberry, 1990).…”

“…The conventional wisdom is that when women run, they usually fair about as well as men do in the general election, but have challenges in the primary or even deciding to enter the race (Burrell, 1992). Usually, the biggest impediment for women candidates in running for office seems to be a lack of open seats (Kirkpatrick, 1974;Darcy, Welch, and Clark, 1987;Burrell, 1992;. The extant research on ballot access rules suggest that they promote incumbency and decrease the likelihood of new candidates entering.…”

Gender and vote revelation strategy in the United States Congress

“…This hypothesis, while not previously posited or tested in terms of vote revelation, has been alluded to in the reporting that women and men do equally well at the ballot box, 'Credentials should be more important for the success of female than male candidates, since politics has traditionally been considered a masculine pursuit. ' (Burrell, 1992). My hypothesis of increased rates of vote revelation for women is an extension of work that finds women tend to sponsor more bills (anzia & Berry, 2011), and speak more frequently on the House floor (Pearson & Dancey, 2011) to overcome voters' projections of a gendered competence gap.…”