Gender, Identity and Candidate Quality in Statewide Elections
Open Access
- Author:
- Kennedy, Megan
- Graduate Program:
- Political Science (PHD)
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- June 07, 2023
- Committee Members:
- Lee Banaszak, Program Head/Chair
Michael Nelson, Co-Chair & Dissertation Advisor
Lee Banaszak, Co-Chair of Committee
Melissa Wright, Outside Unit & Field Member
Erin Heidt-Forsythe, Major Field Member - Keywords:
- Gender
Statewide Elections
Executive Office
Legislative Office
Judicial Office - Abstract:
- While women’s representation in state-level offices has increased in the past few decades, it has lagged behind in executive offices, especially in women obtaining gubernatorial positions. 45 women, elected or appointed, have ever served as their state’s governor, and nearly half the states have yet to elect a woman governor. Yet, this disparity is not consistent across all offices. In order to examine the electoral successes of women throughout state-level or statewide offices, I consider the effects of candidate quality across office type in elections for various offices: governor, US Senate, and state supreme courts. In the first chapter of my dissertation, I argue that disparities in voter perceptions of candidate qualifications between men and women running for governor negatively affect the success of women candidates at the election level, in that women must be more qualified relative to men in order to achieve a similar level of electoral success. This paper also introduces a more comprehensive measure of candidate quality that incorporates experiences from political, professional, and civic experiences that candidates frequently take on before running for high-level elected office. My second paper highlights the potential barriers that women, particularly Black women, face in gubernatorial elections and legislative elections. This study entails a survey experiment that manipulates candidate gender and race, levels of candidate quality, and type of office sought. The goals of this study are 1) to distinguish if and how voters evaluate qualifications differently in executive, rather than legislative, elections, 2) to evaluate voters' demands of quality for Black women relative to other candidates, and 3) to establish if women, overall, must be more qualified than men in order to gain similar support. I generally observe little support for the presence of stereotypes across this experiment, though I do find that race is a significant factor in determining voter perceptions of candidates. In the third chapter, we rely on a conjoint experiment to test the effects of candidate qualifications and gender stereotypes in U.S. state judicial elections. We find that, on average, women candidates are advantaged in judicial elections, though we find no evidence that citizens view women candidates as more well-qualified. While respondents evaluated male and female candidates with most prior professional experiences similarly, we observe important instances of gendered stereotyping in these elections, suggesting that researchers need to pay more attention to the effects of gender in judicial elections.