Raced-Gendered Electability: Support,Donations,and Democratic Double Standards for Black Women Candidates

Abstract

Scholars are consistently concerned about the relative lack of gender and racial representation in Congress. As explicitly sexist and racist attitudes have waned (though by no means disappeared) in the population, we are left searching for alternative explanations for continued representational gaps. We theorize that one driving force is a paradox among Democratic primary voters: namely, that Black women are seen both as more liberal and less electable. Using two different survey experiments, we show that, while most Democratic primary candidates benefit from perceptions of being more liberal, this cannot be said for Black women due to beliefs that they are less likely to win in the general election. These cross-cutting evaluations of Black women candidates by Democratic primary voters perpetuate representational inequities, making it more difficult for Black women to emerge victorious from Democratic primaries compared to men and White women.