(iPoster) The Impact of Gender and Race in Public Opinion of Women’s Campaign Financing

• In Event: Poster Session: Women and Politics

Abstract

Scholars have pointed to various factors that explain women’s underrepresentation in Congress by identifying obstacles women face on the campaign trail. One of the most salient obstacles is the lack of early financial support. The literature on women candidates and their experiences with fundraising has mostly focused on whether women are disadvantaged in terms of total campaign receipts compared to men. This literature has not theorized how the source and amount of campaign contributions may have consequences for women candidates in terms of voter support and candidate evaluation. This project investigates whether the source and dollar amount of campaign contributions signals (non)conformity to race-gendered stereotypes that may harm the public’s support for and evaluations of women candidates. Specifically, are women evaluated less favorably by the public for receiving donations from sources perceived to have a corrupting influence in politics and/or large-dollar donations? I predict that candidate race/ethnicity will also impact their evaluations: women of color may receive the most negative evaluations for accepting donations from “corrupt” sources and/or large-dollar donations compared to white women and coethnic men counterparts. The experiments in this project build on a previous pilot experiment that found that women candidates were perceived as more likely to commit an act of corruption in the future for self-financing compared to men who self-financed and that, compared to women who raised larger average contribution amounts, women candidates with small ($75) average contributions received more positive evaluations. Using two conjoint survey experiments that manipulate candidate race and gender and campaign finance information including source and average contribution amount, this paper assesses whether perceptions of the source and dollar amount of campaign contributions factor into evaluations of and support for Congressional candidates in the primary election setting. Attention is given to differences in evaluations and support between coethnic men and Black, Latina, Asian, and White women candidates.

Author

• Samantha Koprowski, Rutgers University, New Brunswick