Voter Evaluations of Disabled Candidates’ Self-Presentation Strategies

• In Event: Pushing Barriers: The Place of Disability in Politics and Political Science Mini-Conference: Disabled Political Candidates: Navigating Identity, Messaging & Voter Response

Abstract

Voters often rely on stereotypes about candidates’ characteristics and identities when evaluating them. This means that disabled candidates are likely to think carefully about how to frame their disability in their election campaigns, given that disabled people are commonly perceived as incompetent and weak, while simultaneously being portrayed as inspiring and heroic. Drawing on theoretical and empirical approaches to disability as well as examples of disabled candidates’ campaign material, we develop a set of frames of disability which candidates are likely to use. We propose that, in addition to not addressing their disability at all, the most relevant strategies of disabled candidates are to (i) normalise their disability to avoid being othered; (ii) frame their disability as evidence of individual strength and resilience (“inspiring”); and (iii) emphasize the value of their experience of fighting systemic barriers. In a survey experiment with a factorial design and hypothetical campaign leaflets we test whether and how these three frames affect citizens’ evaluations of the traits and representativeness of disabled candidates as well as their electoral support.

Authors

• Stefanie Reher, University of Strathclyde

• Yulia Lemesheva, University of Strathclyde