The Politics of Ableism and Masculinity: Candidate Mental and Physical Illness and Voters' Evaluations

• In Event: Evaluations of Candidates with Disabilities and Mental Health Challenges

Abstract

During the 2022 campaign for U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania, Democrat John Fetterman suffered a stroke that resulted in temporary auditory impairments. Also, potentially as a result, once in office Senator Fetterman was hospitalized for six weeks for depression. Fetterman’s situation provides an ideal test case for analyzing the potential effects of political candidates’ physical and mental ailments on voters’ judgments of them and willingness to support them. Using an original experimental survey, we test voters’ reactions to a generic Fetterman-like candidate who is either healthy, has suffered from depression, has suffered a stroke, or has been through both. We find that, despite existing literature that seems to indicate that candidates with physical illnesses or disabilities seem to perform as well as those with none, and even better than candidates with mental illness, in this case, the combined condition of candidate stroke and depression receives the most negative reactions from voters. The candidate who had only a stroke receives slightly fewer negative views, with the depression condition receiving the least negative judgments relative to the control candidate. Not only do voters rate the experimental candidates in all tests significantly lower on a variety of traits important to elections in the US – specifically those relevant to masculinity – they also are significantly less likely to support such a candidate.

Authors

• Monika L. McDermott, Fordham University

• Jacob Forrest Harrison Smith, Fordham University