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The Effects of Partisan Trespassing Strategies Across Candidate Sex

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Abstract

Candidates frequently engage in partisan trespassing strategies where a candidate will highlight issues and traits associated with stereotypes of the opposing political party. Successful trespassing messages should lead voters to associate candidates with qualities that fit into stereotypes about both Democrats and Republicans, increase electoral support for a candidate, and expand a candidate’s base of support. Few studies, however, investigate whether there are differences in the effects of trespassing strategies across candidate sex. Through three survey experiments, I show that trespassing strategies have both positive and negative effects for female candidates. Voters associate female candidates who trespass with more issues and traits associated with the opposing political party, but voters also associate female candidates with fewer partisan qualities. This trade-off is one that both female and male candidates experience. Male candidates, unlike female candidates, can successfully attract more electoral support from out-partisan voters with trespassing strategies. These findings have broad implications for the viability of female candidates in national and state elections where candidates must secure support across a broad coalition of partisan and out-partisan voters.

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Notes

  1. The literature debates the extent to which partisan trespassing goals motivates the campaign strategies of candidates (see e.g., Sides 2006; Riker 1996; Banda 2013; Simon 2002).

  2. Pure independents comprised less than 5% of the samples and are excluded from the analyses.

  3. Web Appendix 3 includes information about the stimuli pre-tests.

  4. Web Appendix 3 includes more information on the key measures.

  5. Web Appendix 4 displays the results broken out by candidate partisanship.

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Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the four anonymous reviewers and the editor for their very helpful suggestions about how to improve this manuscript.

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  1. Department of Political Science & Manship School of Mass Communication, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, 70803, USA

    Nichole M. Bauer

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Correspondence to Nichole M. Bauer.

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Replication files are available on the Political Behavior Dataverse website, study, https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/MS0NFV.

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Bauer, N.M. The Effects of Partisan Trespassing Strategies Across Candidate Sex. Polit Behav 41, 897–915 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-018-9475-3

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