Leaders’ and Citizens’ Preferences for Female Candidates

• In Event: Using Free List Proportional Representation to Examine Political Behavior

Abstract

Free-list PR gives both party leaders and voting citizens the opportunity to express their preferences over individual candidates. Prior to the election party leaders rank candidates on lists. Voters then cast preference votes at the candidate level, regardless of which list the preferred candidates are on, and post-election candidates’ positions are re-ranked based on these votes. We use pre- and post-election list rank to measure whether elites and citizens prefer individual candidates equally. We hypothesize that female candidates will receive lower pre-election list positions than male candidates. We also hypothesize that female candidates will be less likely than male candidates to maintain or improve upon their pre-election list positions post election. We examine these hypotheses using data from three countries that use Free-list PR: Ecuador, Honduras, and El Salvador.

Authors

• Brian F. Crisp, Washington University in St. Louis

• Patrick Cunha Silva, Washington University in St. Louis