Intersecting campaigns: candidate race, ethnicity, gender and voter evaluations

ABSTRACTWith the rise in minority candidates, particularly women of color in US politics, it is now crucial to identify the ways in which voters use intersectional identity to evaluate elected officials. Previous research has commonly found that voters employ gender or race-based trait stereotypes when evaluating female and minority candidates, however, which trait evaluations prevail when voters are faced with candidates who are both female and non-White? Existing scholarship indicates that women of color – by virtue of their identities – may experience either “strategic advantage” or “double disadvantage” at the polls. We explore these competing theories through a unique experiment designed to understand the role of race and gender-based trait evaluation in shaping voter support for minority women running for office in the US.