Congressional Candidates Research Articles

Gendered Differences in Fundraising Appeals Among Congressional Candidates

We investigate how women candidates solicit campaign donations targeting regular people through mass emails. We argue that women, relative to men, will be more likely to emphasize stereotypically feminine issues in fundraising appeals. Women will use these strategic messages to overcome the stereotypic proscription that women are not supposed to ask people for money to further their own careers. We analyze how gendered issues appear in fundraising appeals for women and men using an original dataset of 10,423 campaign emails sent in the last four weeks of the 2022 mid-term elections for the U.S. Congress. We find several key results. First, we find that Democratic men are more likely to leverage feminine issues in fundraising appeals compared to Democratic women. Second, Democratic women are more likely to highlight manifest feminine issues in fundraising messages relative to Republican women. Our results speak to how candidates use issues that reinforce feminine stereotypes to appeal to potential donors, and how partisanship shapes the strategic fundraising appeals made by women candidates.

Not ready to make nice: Congressional candidates’ emotional appeals on Twitter

AbstractObjectiveCongressional candidates use digital platforms to bolster and define their political reputation, and political stalemates over inflation, reproductive rights, and the lasting impact of Trump politics are fueling candidates’ emotionally charged rhetoric on Twitter, especially for women. Against the backdrop of President Donald Trump's presidency and the #MeToo movement, previous research has shown that women running for Congress are leading with angry rhetoric on Twitter. In this article, we ask whether anger is a persistent feature of women's digital appeals on Twitter over time.MethodUsing a data set of tweets by candidates for the U.S. House from 2016 to 2022, we highlight the escalating anger in the emotional appeals candidates make on Twitter and the resiliency of angry rhetoric as a modern feature of political Twitter.ResultsWe find that women, most notably Democratic candidates, are more likely to convey angry emotions on Twitter, not only matching male colleagues but defying gendered social stereotypes to turn frustration into a valuable political asset. Across the four last congressional elections, women have averaged more angry words in their digital appeals, with that anger as a consistent facet of how women engage online. Women are leaning into angry emotional appeals and adopting a negative appeal in their digital engagement that highlights their policy and political frustrations for voters.

Not All Women: Partisanship’s Impact on Congressional Campaign Communication on Twitter

The 2022 midterm elections resulted in a record-breaking number of women being elected to the U.S. Congress. Previous research suggests that men and women adopt very different styles when campaigning for Congress on Twitter. Women tend to focus more on issues and especially women’s issues compared to men. This research examines gender dynamics during the 2022 midterm elections to uncover gender differences in congressional campaign communication. We find that while both gender and party play a role in the attention congressional candidates give to “women’s issues,” partisanship has a stronger role in shaping candidates’ attention to “men’s issues.” Democratic men and women focus significantly more on women’s issues compared to Republican men. Republican women focused more on women’s issues in the House but not the Senate races. Meanwhile, both Democratic women and men focused less attention on men’s issues; however, the differences between Republican men and women were insignificant. This research helps shed light on the role of gender and party in congressional campaign communication on Twitter at a highly polarized time in American politics.

Tweet like Trump: Political branding and Twitter usage among congressional candidates in 2020 and 2022

AbstractObjectiveWe examine how congressional candidates use social media such as Twitter (X) to promote a political brand and connect with voters during campaigns.MethodsUsing a mixed‐method, interdisciplinary approach, we first conduct a brand analysis using 22 candidates from 11 open‐seat races in 2020. We develop and test several hypotheses using our races from 2020 and the subsequent contests in these districts in 2022, as well as the universe of tweets from all congressional candidates from the 2020 and 2022 general election campaigns (n = 789,411).ResultsWe find the three prominent themes present in our brand analysis—the adoption of gender roles, the mimicking of Trump, and expressions of populism—persist when we examine the Twitter posts from congressional candidates in 2020 and 2022. Male and female candidates behave differently on Twitter as do Republicans and Democrats. Most Republican candidates, regardless of gender, mimic the Trump brand rife with populist themes.ConclusionWe integrate research from political science and communication studies to gain a better understanding of how congressional candidates present their political brand to voters. We raise new questions scholars from the social sciences must consider while studying these phenomena in a fast‐evolving political and social media landscape.

CueAnon: What QAnon Signals About Congressional Candidates and What it Costs Them

CueAnon: What QAnon Signals About Congressional Candidates and What it Costs Them

The Selling of Experience in the 2022 Congressional Elections

Past experience in elective office has always been the best predictor of congressional candidate success in elections. These “quality” candidates come into elections with experience fundraising, name recognition, and general knowledge about how to run a successful campaign. Yet, recent congressional elections have seen an increase in the electoral success of inexperienced candidates. As past experience in office may no longer be valued as it once was, how are these experienced candidates marketing themselves to voters? Are they still leaning into their past experience in elected office or are they more likely to emphasize other occupations and experiences? We expect candidates brand themselves, emphasizing different experiences, based on the type of election they are in and who they are running against. In order to test these expectations, this paper examines all available biography pages of experienced candidates who ran in congressional primaries in 2022. We find clear partisan differences in what candidates past occupational backgrounds they highlight. We find mixed evidence that decisions about what occupations to emphasize vary based on electoral dynamics.

Inflation in 2022 did not affect congressional voting, but abortion did

This study examines voting in the 2022 United States congressional elections, contests that were widely expected to produce a sizable defeat for Democratic candidates for largely economic reasons. Based on a representative national probability sample of voters interviewed in both 2020 and 2022, individuals who changed their vote from one party's congressional candidate to another party's candidate did not do so in response to the salience of inflation or declining economic conditions. Instead, we find strong evidence that views on abortion were central to shifting votes in the midterm elections. Americans who favored (opposed) legal abortions were more likely to shift from voting for Republican (Democratic) candidates in 2020 to Democratic (Republican) candidates in 2022. Since a larger number of Americans supported than opposed legal abortions, the combination of these shifts ultimately improved the electoral prospects of Democratic candidates. New voters were especially likely to weigh abortion views heavily in their vote-shifting calculus. Likewise, those respondents whose confidence in the US Supreme Court declined from 2020 to 2022 were more likely to shift from voting for Republican to Democratic congressional candidates. We provide direct empirical evidence that changes in support for the Supreme Court, a nonpartisan branch of the federal government, are implicated in partisan voting behavior in another branch of government. We explore the implications of these findings for prevalent assumptions about how economic conditions influence voting, as well as for the relationship between the judiciary and electoral politics.

Donate to help us fight back: Political fundraising and toxic rhetoric online

Political candidates utilize social media to mobilize supporters, persuade voters, and raise money. However, little is known about the structure of mass electoral appeals when donors are the primary target instead of voters. Because candidates’ donors and voters can differ significantly, with donors more partisan and ideologically extreme on average, we theorize that candidates use strategic rhetoric tailored to specific audiences. To analyze how campaigns perceive and target their “financial electorate,” we leverage data from the Facebook Ad Library for 2020 U.S. congressional candidates and distinguish political ads by their persuasion targets. Using text analysis, we test the hypotheses that donor-targeting messages are more toxic, negative, and likely to reference a polarizing president than voter-targeting messages. The results support our hypotheses, and Republican candidates, on average, used more toxic language than their Democratic counterparts. As campaigns’ scramble for donations intensifies, these characteristics of fundraising appeals may further polarize the electorate.

The determinants of voting for Republican congressional candidates in the Texas borderlands

AbstractObjectiveA shift of Latino voters to Republican Party candidates has been observed in recent years. Past research on presidential elections supports the idea that borderlands counties vote differently than other counties in borderlands states and tend to favor Democratic Party candidates. This study explores congressional voting patterns in the Texas borderlands.MethodsUsing county‐level data for Texas counties in 2010 and 2022, this study examines Republican congressional voting as a function of (1) borderlands cultural and economic context, (2) economic conditions, (3) social contact, and (4) religious adherence. We contribute to existing scholarship by proposing that there are three district border subregions.ResultsOverall, this study finds increased levels of support for Republican congressional candidates in the borderlands region. However, when subregions are compared, those counties with economic linkages to Mexico and rural Tejano counties are more likely to vote for Democratic Party candidates in 2010 and 2022. The West Texas borderlands region, however, is no longer distinctive from other Texas counties in terms of voting patterns in 2022.ConclusionVoters in the predominantly Latino Texas borderlands are increasingly voting for Republican congressional candidates suggesting a change in partisan attachment. The effects of foreign‐born arrivals and rising economic optimism in the borderlands may lead to more voting for Republican candidates. However, current economic realities and linkages as well as past social and political marginalization may continue to make borderlands voters distinct.

“Didn’t She Used to Sell That WAP?”: Cardi B, Clashing Femininities, and Citizenship

“Didn’t she used to sell that WAP?” tweeted Afro-Latina rapper Cardi B on August 16, 2020, in response to California congressional candidate DeAnna Lorraine’s post: “America needs far more women like Melania [Trump] and far less like Cardi B.” This exchange and others foreground this article’s argument—namely, that conservative reactions to Cardi B’s performances of racialized and classed femininity on Twitter, especially from right-wing cisgender women, aimed to put the rapper “in her place,” which is outside of politics and in opposition to (white) American values. Even though Cardi B’s working-class Black femininity places her outside of discourses of normative U.S. citizenship and meritocracy, the rapper “makes herself at home” by engaging in civic practices regardless of the classist misogynoir directed at her.

Constrained Communication and Negativity Bias: Gendered Emotional Appeals on Facebook

ABSTRACT Are women congressional candidates on Facebook disproportionately punished for using negative emotions? Scholars suggest the success of negative language used by campaigns is patterned by gender, but it is less clear whether women politicians are able to grow support on a digital platform where negativity spurs engagement. In this research note, we consider the relationship between candidate gender, negative appeals, and user engagement on Facebook. We argue that women candidates are not shying away from negative voter appeals on Facebook, posting more on average with anger, disgust, and sadness than male candidates, and those posts are likely to get increased engagement, but that interaction is conditional. Women candidates, while reinforcing connections by getting more likes and comments than their male counterparts, are not advantaged or disadvantaged in the number of times these types of posts are shared – even when the posts contain more negatively valenced language. Our research suggests that there are some limits to the benefits of using negative emotive language for congressional candidates.

Sit Still, Talk Pretty: Partisan Differences Among Women Candidates’ Campaign Appeals

ABSTRACT Women running for Congress make different choices from men about how to connect with constituents on social media, and the increasing number of women running for Congress from both parties suggests that further assessment of the gendered patterns of emotional appeals is needed. We use this opportunity to assess the joint influence of gender and partisanship on patterns of emotional appeals, showing how party moderates the distinct appeals women candidates make on social media. We use a dictionary-based computational approach to catalog congressional candidates’ emotional rhetoric on Twitter during the 2020 election year, finding Republican women use more joyful appeals and fewer angry appeals compared to both Republican men and Democratic women, suggesting a gap in emotive appeals and differing expectations for how women communicate that varies with party. Our results underscore the importance of accounting for relative partisanship in developing a more nuanced explanation of how and when women adopt stereotypical styles of campaign communication as the number of Republican women running for Congress continues to increase.

The political benefits of student loan debt relief

Are people likely to reward politicians who support canceling student loan debt? This paper draws on original conjoint and survey experimental data to assess the effects of student debt relief proposals on voter behavior. Using data collected 3 months prior to Biden’s announcement of a specific plan for broad-based student debt relief, the paper addresses two interrelated questions: How do policy details—such as eligibility restrictions and the amount of debt canceled—shape voter support for candidates who embrace student loan cancellation? And second, will executive action by President Biden increase Democrats’ chances of winning in 2022 or 2024? We find evidence to suggest that candidates who support student debt relief plans offering generous debt cancellation while minimizing eligibility restrictions get the largest boost in support from voters, especially for key Democratic constituencies. We also find that executive action on student debt increases the likelihood that key groups would support Democratic congressional candidates in upcoming electoral contests. These results offer the first systematic evidence exploring the potential political ramifications of enacting student debt relief.

Prototypicality threat drives support for nativist politics in U.S. and U.K. elections

Recent research shows that increasing diversity due to immigration can lead members of dominant ethnic groups (e.g., Whites in America) to experience prototypicality threat – the concern that their claim to best represent their national identity may be lost. Here we examine the emotional and behavioral responses to prototypicality threat in the domain of politics. Across eight years, five studies, two nations, and four electoral contexts (White Americans’ support for Trump in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election; White Britons’ support for the 2016 Brexit Referendum; White Americans’ support for Congressional candidates in 2018 U.S. Midterm Election; and White Americans’ support for a fictitious Congressional candidate in the 2022 U.S. Midterm Election), we show that prototypicality threat explains support for nativist policies and candidates. Furthermore, when those high in prototypicality threat see their favored nativist politics as victorious, they report lower anxiety and threat after the election. By demonstrating the role of prototypicality threat in support for nativist politics specifically, this work helps us understand how people respond to broad societal issues and suggests novel strategies for addressing politics hostile to immigrants.

Negative Sentiment and Congressional Cue-Taking on Social Media

ABSTRACTCongressional candidates regularly turn their frustration into posts on Facebook, fueling extreme partisanship and “echo-chamber” dialogue with their negative sentiment. In this research, we provide new evidence demonstrating the power of that negative sentiment to elicit more user engagement on Facebook across various metrics, illustrating how congressional candidates’ use of negativity corresponds with greater negativity in public responses. To fully comprehend the impact of these online political messages, we use a dictionary-based computational approach to catalog the tone of US House of Representatives candidates’ messages on Facebook and the user responses they elicit during the 2020 election. This research speaks to the power of elite rhetoric to shape political climates and pairs candidate strategies with user responses—contributing new insights into the mechanisms for voter engagement.

Good and pissed: gendered emotional appeals on Twitter

ABSTRACT Persistent gender stereotypes portray women as pleasant and polite, but in the wake of the #MeToo movement and polarized politics, female candidates are turning to Twitter and they aren’t hiding their frustration. Congressional candidates use Twitter to connect with voters, but political stalemates over health care, reproductive rights, and pay equity are the fodder for female candidates’ emotionally charged rhetoric on Twitter. Women are running and winning at rates comparable to men, but female candidates are relying on emotional appeals in distinct ways from their male counterparts. We use a dataset of tweets by candidates for the U.S. House from 2016–2020 to evaluate gender-based differences in the emotional appeals candidates make on Twitter. We find that women running for office adopt a unique style of angry emotional appeals on Twitter, as female candidates defy stereotypes by incorporating more angry rhetoric in their tweets. These differences persist after accounting for differences in party, electoral success, district competitiveness, and other potential confounds. Our research demonstrates that women seeking congressional office act differently than men in their self-presentation online, and offers insight into how anger has become central to online messaging.

Do house prices affect campaign contributions?

AbstractIndividual campaign contributions are the largest source of financing for U.S. presidential and congressional candidates, though the body of research examining why people give remains small. To help understand these decisions, we estimate the causal impact of house prices on donations across campaigns and parties using an instrumental variables strategy. Our results indicate that an increase in house prices increases ZIP code‐level donations to Democratic presidential and congressional candidates, with minuscule or no effect for Republican candidates. The effects in areas with a greater proportion of renters are larger than areas with more homeowners. Since this population is likely to experience higher rents as a result of house price increases, this suggests that pleas for policy may inspire giving. Further, areas with the highest fraction of college educated residents also see the largest effects, when compared to less‐educated areas, suggesting a wealth effect exists as well.

The nature and impact of emotional content in congressional candidate emails to supporters

Previous research suggests that appeals to anger and enthusiasm increase voter participation but decrease deliberation and openness to persuasion, while appeals to anxiety increase information-seeking and deliberation but not participation. Thus, campaigns have incentives to consider the emotional nature of their communications with voters and to differentiate distinct emotions that share valence categories. We examine the emotional content of emails sent by candidates for the US House to partisan supporters and test the effects of these appeals on voter behavior. Overall, emails contain more enthusiasm and anger relative to a set of political “letters to the editor” drawn from major US newspapers and, in some cases, relative to a set of randomly generated “pseudo-emails” based on word frequency in typical discourse. We do not, however, find any consistent differences in emotional language across candidate or campaign factors, such as incumbency and competitiveness. In a unique quasi-experimental study fielded during the 2018 election, using actual campaign emails, we also find little evidence that the emotional content of campaign communications influences citizens. This is true regardless of whether we measure emotional content using objective codings or subjective judgments by human coders. We discuss methodological difficulties encountered in our work and possible lessons for future research on this topic.

Hostile Sexism, Benevolent Sexism, and American Elections

AbstractAnalyzing unique, nationally representative data, I show that two faces of sexism—hostile and benevolent—operate in systematically different ways to shape Americans’ electoral decisions and evaluations of their leaders. In the 2016 presidential election, both fostered support for Donald Trump and opposition to Hillary Clinton. They operated differently at the congressional level, however. In analyses of actual congressional candidates and in a conjoint experiment, the impact of hostile sexism is moderated by candidate sex: those high in hostile sexism oppose (and those low in hostile sexism favor) female candidates. Benevolent sexism is moderated by candidates’ symbolically gendered leadership styles: those high in benevolent sexism oppose candidates with feminine styles and favor candidates with masculine styles, regardless of whether the candidate is male or female. I conclude with discussion of the implications of the two faces of sexism for the role of gender and power in American elections.

Primary Divisions: How Voters Evaluate Policy and Group Differences in Intraparty Contests

While central to theories of polarization and primary elections, surprisingly little evidence shows that partisans favor candidates who take ideologically consistent issue positions, above other considerations, in intraparty contests. In this study, we investigate how voters weigh policy and nonpolicy differences when evaluating same-party politicians, using novel conjoint experiments that manipulate the demographic, biographical, and issue information of congressional candidates. We recruit 4,093 participants in the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, assigning half to either rate same-party candidates on an ideological scale or choose between them in primary-like settings. We find that voters place candidates along coherent policy lines and give greater support to those taking party-consistent issue positions. We also find evidence of affinity voting on shared racial, gender, and religious characteristics, though effects are typically smaller. Our results underscore how informed partisans’ policy attitudes can drive choices in primary elections, including which candidates contest them.