Gender-affinity voting in legislative elections under open-list proportional representation rules: the legislative elections in Chile in 2017

ABSTRACT

In most democracies, women are a majority in the electorate, but men are the majority of those elected. Previous studies on gender affinity voting that point to substantive, descriptive and symbolic representation are often based on polling date and focus on whether women issues were central in the election. Since electoral rules—including candidate gender quotas—impact the choices voters have, we use a novel database with precinct-level voting data for 960 candidates (397 women) in the 28 open-list proportional representation districts for the 2017 Chamber of Deputies election in Chile to identify the determinants of gender affinity voting for candidates in same party matchups and whether gender affinity voting differently impacted left and rightwing parties. Using 35,120 precincts, we analyze 1,344,098 data points for individual candidates’ vote shares. We find statistically significant, but not substantive, gender affinity voting, especially favorable to women candidates in leftwing parties.

KEYWORDS:

• Legislative elections
• proportional representation
• open lists
• gender affinity
• women candidates
• Chile

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Fund for Scientific and Technological Development (FONDECYT) [Grant Number #1200317].

Notes on contributors

Ariel Becerra-Chávez

Ariel Becerra-Chávez is an associate researcher in the Political Electoral Observatory at Universidad Diego Portales in Chile. He is a political scientist who studies institutions, elections and public opinion.

Patricio Navia

Patricio Navia is a full professor of political science at Universidad Diego Portales in Chile and a clinical professor of Liberal Studies at New York University.