Social Desirability Effects and Support for a Female American President

Abstract

Public opinion polls show consistently that a substantial portion of the American public would vote for a qualified female presi- dential candidate. Because of the controversial nature of such questions, however, the responses may suffer from social desirability effects. In other words, respondents may be purposely giving false answers as not to violate societal norms. Using an unobtrusive measure called the list experiment, we find that public opinion polls are indeed exaggerating support for a female president. Roughly 26 percent of the public is angry or upset about the prospect of a female president. Moreover, this level of dissatisfaction is constant across several demographic groups. As talk about the 2008 presidential election heats up, there is much speculation about whether the United States will elect its first female president; questions about the extent to which the public would support a woman for president have taken on more than hypothetical value. The White House Project has been established to research stereotypes about women as national leaders and to promote the idea of a woman as a president. Senator and former first lady Hillary Clinton leads in all polls to be the Democratic Party nominee in 2008, and the Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has been promoted within Republican circles as that party's nominee, although she has declared she would not be a candidate.