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Despite their increasing presence and importance in the workforce, many women continue to concentrate in blue and pink-collar sectors that are characterized by high economic vulnerability and low social status. This dynamic has important implications for the politics of representation. Previous studies have demonstrated that female politicians positively affect women’s political attitudes through symbolic representation. However, the degree to which marginalized female workers see themselves in a female politician is likely to be much lower than for women with professional careers. Much research in gender and politics demonstrates that voters use different standards to evaluate male and female candidates' qualifications and electability. If voters are inclined to doubt female candidates' abilities as leaders, as evidence suggests (Bauer 2020; Ditonto 2014), female candidates will have to work harder than their male counterparts to prove their qualifications in order to win. Indeed, research finds that female candidates tend to have higher objective qualifications than male candidates (Anzia and Berry 2011; Lazarus and Steigerwalt 2018). Building off this line of research, we theorize that working-class backgrounds will have disproportionately negative consequences for female candidates' electoral prospects. In this project, we use conjoint experiments to examine the class and gender effects of political representatives on voters' perceived relatability, accountability, and candidate preference.

Previous studies have shown that Americans are more accepting of inequality than other nationalities and that racial prejudice is a major contributor to the low levels of public support for the redistribution of wealth toward low-income workers. During the Covid-19 pandemic, however, American citizens have increasingly recognized the essential role low-income workers play in society. Will this growing attention to low-income workers increase public support for redistribution? Will this effect moderate the strong influence of race-based considerations in American attitudes toward redistribution? We answer these questions through a choice-based conjoint experiment, where respondents will compare two individuals and evaluate their deservingness for government assistance programs.

Despite rising income inequality over recent decades, the American public does not demand more redistribution (Kelly and Enns 2010; Kenworthy and McCall 2008). Previous studies point to racial bias as a key determinant of low public support for redistribution (Gilens 1995, 1999; Quadagno et al. 1994). A deficit of political demands for redistribution fails to incentivize policy-makers to increase welfare spending, which in turn, reinforces inequality (Brooks and Manza 2007; Soroka and Wlezien 2012; Wlezien 2004). Accordingly, the vast majority of low-income workers have suffered from poverty with little access to social support. The Covid-19 pandemic in the U.S. has aggravated the financial vulnerability of low-income workers. Social distancing measures meant to curb the spread of the virus resulted in a massive job or wage loss concentrated among low-income workers, most of whom cannot work from home. Moreover, the fact that African Americans and Latinos are over-represented in low-income jobs implies that the pandemic's financial burden disproportionately affects these racial minorities despite their contribution to society. In this study, we examine how the emphasis on the essential contribution to society made by low-income workers affects non-black citizens' racial bias in their redistributive preferences. While the economic toll of the Covid-19 pandemic has most heavily affected low-income workers, perhaps ironically, the crisis has also made citizens realize how much American society relies on the labor provided by these workers. During the pandemic, many low-income workers are classified as essential workers to the basic functioning of society and continued to work jobs and put their health at risk. These jobs include bus drivers, garbage collectors, food processing plant workers, grocery store cashiers, and care providers. Although our society's dependence on these workers' labor is nothing new, their social and economic roles have become particularly salient during the current pandemic. Will this growing attention to low-income essential workers increase public support for redistribution? Further, how does it interact with the public's racial bias in their redistributive preferences? To address this question, we investigate how priming about a race of low-income essential workers (white and black) alters public support for redistribution policies.