Stronger together: political ambition and the presentation of women running for office

Abstract

Does the presence of women candidates encourage other women to run for office? The extant literature is unclear on the question, with some studies pointing to evidence in the affirmative, but others indicating these effects may be null. We draw on the literature on role model effects in psychology to argue that an individual’s feelings about a particular candidate may affect whether or not that candidate is actually able to inspire that individual to run herself. Using campaign ads from Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign for the U.S. presidency, we find evidence that observing Clinton running for office does indeed increase the political ambition of some of her women supporters. At the same time, though, observing her run actually decreases ambition in other women. This effect is much greater than the effect of the context of the political ad, which does not seem to have a significant effect on women’s political ambition. Furthermore, because observing Clinton also decreases the ambition of her male supporters, the effect of her campaign may be to shrink the size of the political ambition gender gap.

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