It’s not me, it’s you: perceptions of others and attitudes toward a female nominee in the 2020 New Hampshire democratic primary

ABSTRACT

While the 2020 Democratic field was touted as one of the most diverse in presidential nomination history, a white, male, heterosexual candidate ultimately won the nomination. This is, on its face, surprising, as we might expect less sexism and more enthusiasm for diverse candidates among Democratic voters. To help explain this outcome, we refocus attention on the “third-person effect” and the anticipated reactions of others to a female candidate, rather than voters own individual beliefs in two ways. First, we demonstrate that attitudes about female presidential candidates still follow third-person effect predictions; individuals attribute socially desirable attitudes to themselves and less so more distant others (i.e. “Americans”). Second, we analyze how voters take into account perceived potential gender bias by others, which in turn influences female candidates’ perceived electability (likely support from other voters). Gendered electability then has measurable impacts on preference for female candidates, as they strategically choose the more electable candidate. Overall, these results demonstrate looking at the anticipated gender bias of others, rather than just an individual’s attitudes, can be helpful in explaining the continued perception of female presidential candidates as less electable and, ultimately, why women have not yet broken the highest glass ceiling.

KEYWORDS:

• Women presidential candidates
• female candidates
• electability and gender
• 2020 presidential election
• third-person effect

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) was also in the race but dropped out before the September poll so she is not included in this analysis.

2 The individual support question and the support of others’ questions are worded in opposite directions, which increases the chance of acquiescence bias in that those who tend to acquiesce may increase the gap between responses.

3 The question wording is: “I will support the candidate that best represents my policy priorities on issues that are important to me;” OR “I will support the candidate that I believe has the best chance of beating Donald Trump.”

4 The question wording is: “Do you believe that it is likely or unlikely that President Trump will be re-elected?” (Likely/Unlikely).

5 While there is demonstrated social desirability bias in the question about an individual’s support for a female president (see Streb et al. 2008), the concept of interest in third-person effects research is the gap between one’s own support for socially desirable outcomes and that of others. Therefore, social desirability effects are an assumption of the model, but that they operate differently for individuals’ perceptions of themselves versus others.

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Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.