Female Candidates’ Incumbency and Quality (Dis)Advantage in Local Elections

Abstract

ABSTRACT As springboards to higher office we need to better understand women’s electoral success at lower-level offices to eliminate the gender gap among elected officials in the United States. To help understand women’s success as local candidates, we ask: is there a difference in electoral performance between men and women with political experience who run for local office? We use an aggregate dataset of mayoral and city council elections in California between 2008 and 2015, focusing on two types of “quality” candidates – incumbents and candidates with previous elected experience. We found that female incumbents and female candidates with previous elected experience garner lower vote shares than their male counterparts, and these patterns are more pronounced in big city elections accounting for campaign financing. Despite the presumption that women do better than men in lower-level offices, male candidates get a bigger boost from incumbency and previous elected experience than female candidates.