Attitudes Toward Minority And Female Candidates: The Effect Of Historic Elections On Outlooks For Similarly Historic Elections

Abstract

In this paper I will provide background and summary on previous research regarding female candidates, Latino candidates, and African American candidates, specifically the ways in which they are treated differently, are thought about differently, and govern differently; descriptive representation; the lack of research on how men are affected by political representation by women and how white people are affected by political representation by non-white elected officials; and the article that inspired this research question and experiment. I walk through my research questions and hypotheses. I, then, discuss my research design, including the process of choosing both the research questions and the treatment groups and the concerns we had about social desirability and controlling for outside factors. Finally, I discuss some of the problems and potential issues that might have skewed the results and conclusions potentially lowering the external validity.