| dc.description.abstract | Every year, the political candidates who run in the U.S. congressional elections become more and more diverse; there are more women, more veterans, more members of ethnic group minorities in Congress. Political candidates are complex in their identity and what they portray to the electorate. This dissertation examined how candidates’ identity traits (i.e., gender, partisanship, and veteran status) and their interaction affect how voters evaluate such candidates, and the effects such evaluations have on voting behaviors. A pilot study (N = 184 U.S. adult participants) was conducted to develop experimental stimuli. Then, a main study (N = 404 U.S. adult participants) with a 2 (gender: male vs. female) x 2 (partisanship: Republican vs. Democrat) x 2 (veteran status: veteran vs. non-veteran) between-subjects factorial design was conducted to test the proposed hypotheses.
Results indicated that female candidates and Democratic candidates were evaluated by participants as higher on competence, trustworthiness, goodwill, and likability compared to male candidates and Republican candidates. Additional mediation analyses showed that competence and likability mediated the relationships between gender and vote choice intent and between partisanship and vote choice intent. The discussion expands on these findings and their theoretical and practical implications, acknowledging the study’s limitations, while also proposing several lines for future research.
Keywords: political communication, gender, politics, identity, elections, voting behaviors. | en_US |
