Evaluating the Minority Candidate Penalty with a Regression Discontinuity Approach

2024/01/08 by Ariel White, Paru Shah, Eric Gonzalez Juenke +1 · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Gender Politics and Representation #Electoral Systems and Political Participation #Social and Intergroup Psychology

paper · pdf · doi:10.1017/s0007123423000583

Abstract

Abstract Do parties face an electoral penalty when they nominate candidates of colour? We employ a regression discontinuity design using state legislative election data from 2018, 2019, and 2020 to isolate the effect of nominating a candidate of colour on a party's general election performance. Utilising this approach with real-world data heightens external validity relative to existing racial penalty studies, largely supported by surveys and experiments. We find no evidence that candidates of colour are disadvantaged in state legislative general elections relative to narrowly nominated white candidates from the same party. These findings challenge the leading explanations for the underrepresentation of racial/ethnic minority groups, with implications for candidate selection across the United States.

Discussions

• Don’t wanna get into today bc this decision sucks for Black voters. But have seen a lot about what this means for Black reps, and lots of research shows this doesn’t have to be a tradeoff. Our recent [bsky, 127 points, 2 comments]

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