Outsiders among outside groups? Campaign advertising and the electability of female US House candidates

Abstract

ABSTRACT Female candidates have long benefitted from their connections to PACs. However, many of the studies on women and PACs were published prior to the proliferation of ideologically-oriented Super PACs, 501c dark money groups, and 527s in the 2010s. To examine the impact of these groups on female candidates, this paper asks whether outside groups are less likely to run television ads targeting women. We expect outside groups will run more ads for their preferred candidate when the opposition is a male quality candidate because gendered recruitment networks, gender stereotypes, and gendered media coverage combine to create a more difficult path to office for female quality candidates. Therefore, we expect outside groups will perceive fewer incentives to spend their valuable resources fending off challenges from female (quality) candidates. We test this hypothesis using data from Wesleyan Media Project, an original dataset on US House candidates, the US Census, and the Cook Political Report. We find support for our expectation that the number of ads outside groups air is influenced by both the gender and quality of the opposition to their preferred candidate among Republican-leaning outside groups, but not among Democratic-leaning ones.