Gender, Campaign Finance, and Electoral Success in Municipal Elections

Abstract

:Despite high success rates when they run for office, women are still underrepresented in federal, state, and local elective office. Past research has explored factors that contribute to the scarcity of female candidates on the state and federal level, but little attention has been paid to the local level. This article begins to fill that gap by exploring electoral and fundraising patterns in mayoral and council elections in seven cities. We find that, similar to state and federal elections, women do just as well as men when they seek office but fewer women run. Further, of the women who do mount campaigns their backgrounds are quite similar to male candidates, raise comparable amounts of campaign funds, and receive contributions from the same sources. In general, we found few differences between male and female candidates. These findings highlight the importance of self-selection in the decision to run for office.

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