The Contingent Effects of Sexism in Primary Elections
| Author | Danny Hayes,Jennifer L. Lawless |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/10659129211043134 |
| Published date | 01 December 2022 |
| Date | 01 December 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Political Research Quarterly
2022, Vol. 75(4) 1021–1036
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/10659129211043134
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The Contingent Effects of Sexism in
Primary Elections
Danny Hayes
1
and Jennifer L. Lawless
2
Abstract
Although the landscape for female candidates in U.S. politics has improved, research continues to find that many voters
possess sexist attitudes. We rely on a standard political communication framework to help reconcile sexism in the
electorate with increasingly favorable outcomes for women in primary elections. Based on two national survey ex-
periments, we first demonstrate that in the absence of gendered campaign rhetoric, sexism is a weak predictor of
support for female candidates on both sides of the political aisle. We then show, however, that when a male candidate
attempts to activate sexism among voters by attacking a female opponent, gender attitudes become more salient—but
not to the woman’s disadvantage. In a Democratic primary, gendered attacks backfire and lead to a significant boost in
support for the female candidate. On the Republican side, a male candidate does not face the same backlash, but the
attacks do very little to depress his female opponent’s support. While the persistence of hostile at titudes toward women
has slowed the march toward gender equality in society, our experimental results suggest that sexism exerts only
contingent effects in primary elections and not systematically to female candidates’detriment.
Keywords
sexism, primary elections, gender stereotypes, campaign rhetoric
In the last decade, the number of women holding elective
office in the United States increased substantially. Be-
tween 2011 and 2021, female representation grew by 58%
in Congress, 38% among statewide elected officials, and
30% in state legislatures.
1
Nearly one-third of the 44
women ever to occupy the governor’s mansion served
during the last decade.
2
And in 2020, Kamala Harris
became the first woman elected vice president. Although
Democrats account for much of these gains, the number of
Republican women in Congress also increased
markedly—by 81% in the last 10 years alone.
This development is notable given the persistence of
sexism within the electorate. Surveys continue to find that
many voters possess attitudes that suggest hostility toward
equal treatment for women. For instance, in a 2020 poll,
nearly one-third of U.S. respondents said that “when
women demand equality these days, they are actually
seeking special favors.”Asked if “women who complain
about harassment often cause more problems than they
solve,”47% of Republicans, 26% of independents, and
15% of Democrats agreed.
3
Scholars often point to the polarized nature of
American electoral politics to explain why the continued
existence of sexism is not at odds with the rise in women’s
representation. Because voters’partisan attachments have
grown so strong, they will almost always vote for their
party’s nominee; candidate sex (or any other character-
istic) exerts only minimal influence on voters’attitudes
(Brooks 2013;Dolan 2014;Hayes and Lawless 2016;
Teele, Kalla, and Rosenbluth 2018). Put simply, even
unabashed sexists find it more appealing to cast a ballot
for a female co-partisan than to cross party lines.
But partisanship cannot explain why women of both
parties now win primary elections in record numbers as
well.
4
After all, gender and sexism should play a stronger
role in campaigns in which voters cannot rely on party
cues (Hayes 2011;Hayes and Lawless 2016;King and
Matland 2003;McDermott 1997). When running against
men of the same party, women theoretically should have a
hard time winning over sexist voters. And the fact that
1
George Washington University, DC, USA
2
University of Virginia, VA, USA
Corresponding Author:
Danny Hayes, Department of Political Science, George Washington
University, Monroe Hall, 2115 G Street, NW Washington, DC 20052,
USA.
Email: dwh@gwu.edu
male candidates could exploit sexism in an effort to drive
down support for their female opponents would seem to
pose another formidable challenge. Yet, in primary
elections for both Congress and state legislatures, women
are just as able as men to secure party nominations.
In this article, we rely on an experimental approach to
help reconcile sexist attitudes in the electorate with in-
creasingly favorable outcomes for women in primary
elections. Based on two national survey experiments, we
show that sexism plays a nuanced role in contests for party
nominations. We first demonstrate that in the absence of
gendered campaign rhetoric, sexism is a weak predictor of
support for female candidates. We then show, however,
that when a male candidate attempts to activate sexism
among voters by attacking his female opponent, gender
attitudes become more salient—but not to the woman’s
disadvantage. In a Democratic primary, where the vast
majority of voters possess “non-sexist”attitudes, gen-
dered attacks backfire and lead to a significant boost in
support for the female candidate. On the Republican side,
where sexism is more prevalent among voters, a male
candidate does not face the same backlash. But even
among the most sexist GOP primary voters, the attacks do
very little to depress his female opponent’s support. Al-
though the persistence of hostile attitudes toward women
has slowed the march toward gender equality in society,
our experimental results suggest that sexism exerts only
contingent effects in primary elections and not system-
atically to female candidates’detriment.
How Sexism Could Affect
Primary Elections
Previous work on female candidates in primary elections
has taken a number of approaches to identify the potential
effects of sexism. Some researchers have assessed
women’s fundraising and win rates in primaries to de-
termine whether they face disadvantages or bias (e.g.,
Anastasopoulos 2016;Barnes, Branton, and Cassese
2017;Burrell 2014;Hassell and Visalvanich 2019;
Kitchens and Swers 2016;Lawless and Pearson 2008;
Palmer and Simon 2008;Pearson and McGhee 2013;
Thomsen 2019;2020). Others have focused on latent
gender stereotypes among voters that could influence
attitudes toward female candidates (e.g., Bauer 2017;
Cassese and Holman 2018;King and Matland 2003;
Lawless 2004;Sanbonmatsu and Dolan 2009). And still
others have explored the ways that sexist attitudes shape
how voters search for information about candidates, often
to female contenders’disadvantage (Ditonto 2019;
Ditonto, Hamilton, and Redlawsk 2014).
For the most part, however, scholars have not applied a
standard political communication framework to study
how sexism affects female candidates’fortunes in primary
campaigns. The classical model of persuasion (e.g.,
Hovland, Janis, and Kelley 1953) suggests that people’s
political opinions—such as vote choice—typically
emerge from a combination of their own prior beliefs
and the information they are exposed to in public dis-
course (e.g., McGuire 1968;Zaller 1992). This means that
in elections, people’s existing attitudes, or predispositions,
do not deterministically dictate their choices. Rather,
those attitudes are activated when voters encounter rel-
evant communications in the campaign environment
(Bartels 1988;Hillygus and Jackman 2003;Sides and
Vavreck2013). The core insi ght of this body of research is
that “campaign messages. . . work their influence in
concert with voters’prevailing predispositions and sen-
timents”(Iyengar and Simon 2000, 158). By simulta-
neously considering both campaign messages and voters’
key predispositions, this framework allows for the deri-
vation of a richer set of expectations regarding the role
sexism will play in primary campaigns involving men and
women.
First, we expect that sexism will not automatically
influence support for female candidates. Instead, it should
play its strongest role when campaign rhetoric makes
gender-related attitudes salient. We ground this expecta-
tion in prior research that suggests voters’beliefs about
gender stereotypes shape their support for female can-
didates only when campaign activity brings those con-
siderations to mind (Bauer 2015;Hayes 2011). For
instance, in Bauer’s (2015) experiment, respondents ex-
posed to news stories containing gendered language were
more likely to judge female candidates in stereotypical
ways than were subjects who saw coverage without that
language. These findings are consistent with studies ar-
guing that in some cases a gendered campaign environ-
ment can create a series of strategic challenges for women
(Bauer 2017;Cassese and Holman 2018;Dittmar 2015;
Krupnikov and Bauer 2014;Windett 2014). In contrast to
an earlier line of work positing that candidate sex is a
chronically influential feature of voters’choices (e.g.,
Sanbonmatsu 2002), the emerging consensus is that the
influence of gender attitudes is “highly conditional and
[dependent] on the types of information voters receive
over the course of a campaign”(Bauer 2015, 705).
Although research that directly measures sexism in
primary campaigns is sparse, analyses of the presidential
race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are
consistent with this perspective. Numerous studies of the
2016 election find strong correlations between sexism and
vote choice (Bock, Byrd-Craven, and Burkley 2017;
Bracic, Israel-Trummel, and Shortle 2019;Knuckey 2019;
Schaffner, MacWilliams, and Nteta 2018;Sides, Tesler,
and Vavreck 2020). But that relationship appears due at
least in part to the highly gendered nature of the campaign.
1022 Political Research Quarterly 75(4)
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