Gender affinity effects between female voters and women leaders in parliamentary elections: Cross-national evidence (1996-2016)
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SAGE PUBLICATIONS
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2023Referencia bibliográfica
PARTY POLITICS
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Operational Program: Andalusia ERDF 2014-2020: B-SEJ-508-UGR18Resumen
An increasing amount of literature has demonstrated that party leaders affect voting behavior in parliamentary elections.
However, the electoral impact of female leadership of political parties has been under-researched. The gender affinity
hypothesis suggests that when women run for presidential or prime ministerial office, women are more likely than men to
vote for them. Using data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems project, we tested gender affinity effects
between female voters and female party leaders in mixed-sex legislative elections, that is, elections involving at least one
female party candidate for prime minister, in parliamentary and semi-presidential systems. We analyzed 50 elections held
from 1996 to 2016 in 24 countries. The results showed that female leaders were better evaluated by women and that
women were more likely than men to vote for them. However, the gender affinity effects were small and not largely
conditioned or not conditioned at all by other factors, such as some voters’ characteristics and electoral setting.