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Cue Voting: Which Women Vote for Women Senate Candidates?
Author(s) -
Stambough Stephen J.,
O'Regan Valerie R.
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
politics and policy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.259
H-Index - 23
eISSN - 1747-1346
pISSN - 1555-5623
DOI - 10.1111/j.1747-1346.2003.tb00146.x
Subject(s) - voting , voting behavior , political science , social psychology , psychology , demographic economics , law , economics , politics
This article explores the effects of candidate gender on individual voting behavior. We investigate whether female candidates attract support from female voters based on their gender. Our research centers around three areas. First, we discuss cue theory and how it applies to gender studies. Second, we investigate the 19 Senate elections from 1988‐92 in which one of the major party candidates was a female. Finally, we examine the potential impact of partisanship and seat status—whether an incumbent ran or whether there was an open seat—on voting for female candidates. We find that seat status is important and that gender cue voting is a factor only among Republican voters, especially male Republicans.