Kevins_Race class or both Responses to candidate characteristics in Canada the UK and the US.pdf (2.23 MB)
Race, class, or both? Responses to candidate characteristics in Canada, the UK, and the US
Research suggests that voters use identity markers to infer information about candidates for office. Yet politicians have various markers that often point in conflicting directions, and it is unclear how citizens respond to competing signals – especially outside of a few highly stigmatized groups in the US. Given the relevance of these issues for electoral behavior and patterns of representation, this article examines the impact of intersectional identities and less intensely stigmatized markers in Canada, the UK, and the US. It does so using a survey experiment that varies the race (white/East Asian) and class background (higher/lower) of a candidate for office. I then compare results across the cases, examining willingness to vote for the candidate as well as assumptions about his ideological proximity, relatability, and potential contributions. In doing so, I build from past research suggesting that voter ideology likely shapes reactions to candidates from disadvantaged backgrounds. Results suggest that marginalized identity markers have relatively widespread effects among leftists and (to a lesser extent) centrists, but that, outside of the Canadian left, class seems to matter more than race. Overlapping marginalized identities, in turn, had little impact, with the lower-class white and East-Asian profiles eliciting similar reactions.
History
Published in
Politics, Groups, and IdentitiesVolume
9Issue
4Pages
699-720Publisher
Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis GroupVersion
- VoR (Version of Record)
Rights holder
© The AuthorPublisher statement
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.Acceptance date
2019-06-23Publication date
2019-07-03Copyright date
2019ISSN
2156-5503eISSN
2156-5511Publisher version
Language
- en
Depositor
Dr Anthony Kevins. Deposit date: 14 October 2019Usage metrics
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