When Women Run: Double-Edged Effects of Political Representation

• In Event: National Policymaking

Abstract

This paper examines how candidates’ donations received during their political campaign, and potentially their legislative voting pattern later in Congress, change depending on their opponent’s gender. Using a regression discontinuity design that exploits close primary races, I estimate the impact of women running for the U.S. House of Representative’s office between 1980–2014 on the donations to the competing candidates. I find that Republican candidates receive financial donations from a greater number of socially conservative interest groups, such as anti-abortion and gun rights advocates, but from a smaller number of socially liberal interest groups, such as abortion rights, gun control, and civil rights advocates, when running against Democratic women relative to men. This treatment effect is likely driven both by the candidates’ shift in political orientation and by political groups’ strategic donation to help elect the candidate: while I cannot disentangle these two channels cleanly, I find that the effect remains significant for incumbents, for whom the political groups may already expect a higher chance of winning and thus have lower incentive to be strategic with their giving. In other words, the increase in giving from socially conservative interest groups is likely to be driven, at least in part, by the Republican candidate’s shift in political stance. I find no shift in Democratic candidates’ campaign finances during this stage. This impact lasts beyond the election and we see suggestive evidence that the legislators continue to vote more conservatively in Congress. Republican legislators vote more conservatively on a curated social voting index on selected social issues composed of education, women’s issues, civil rights, reproductive rights, and gun rights. Democratic candidates show no change in campaign finances but vote more liberally on women’s issues after running against Republican women versus men. The results imply that facilitating the entry of women into the political world has an impact beyond women winning. Failed attempts for office may indeed be costly, pushing competing candidates into more partisan positions, thereby making the effort toward political representation a double-edged endeavor.

Author

• Da Yea Oh, Pepperdine University
  Presenting Author