Voters Don't Penalize Candidates For Being Minorities or Women

But they might reward them for being women.

Do political candidates like Kamala Harris, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton perform worse than they otherwise would because of discrimination? Maybe, but they might also do better thanks to discrimination in their favor.

Thankfully, we have two recent meta-analyses of experiments that suggest an answer.

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The Studies

The studies included in these meta-analyses are based on conjoint, factorial, or vignette survey designs. In these studies, researchers present participants with information about candidates and ask them to evaluate them, to make voting decisions, and so on. For example, in a conjoint study, participants might be introduced to different candidates with traits like race, political experience, education, and various policy positions outlined, and then they might be asked to pick which among different sets of candidates they prefer. Over enough runs, you can estimate the impact of race net of other candidate characteristics.

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The Results