BIROn - Birkbeck Institutional Research Online

    Public attitudes and private prejudices: assessing voters' willingness to vote for out lesbian and gay candidates

    Everitt, J. and Horvath, Laszlo (2021) Public attitudes and private prejudices: assessing voters' willingness to vote for out lesbian and gay candidates. Frontiers in Political Science 3 , ISSN 2673-3145.

    [img]
    Preview
    Text
    45900.pdf - Published Version of Record
    Available under License Creative Commons Attribution.

    Download (1MB) | Preview

    Abstract

    Our study concerns the factors leading to the electoral success and failure of LGBTQ candidates in the context of the changing nature of prejudices. We hypothesize that more positive views toward “respectability candidates,” as captured by familial status, has replaced explicit prejudice toward out LGBTQ candidates in societies where acceptance of sexual minorities in general has grown. In a survey experiment conducted with a sample of Canadian voters, one of the first countries to legalize marriage equality, we find suggestions that voters are more likely to reward lesbian and gay candidates who adopt heteronormative relationships (married with children vs. single) than those who do not. These patterns become more evident when we explore causal heterogeneity with controls for individual-level characteristics and attitudes that typically predict support toward lesbian and gay candidates. Here we find these predictors rewarded single lesbian and gay candidates, whereas lesbian and gay candidates with families were simply more supported across the board.

    Metadata

    Item Type: Article
    School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences
    Depositing User: Laszlo Horvath
    Date Deposited: 06 Oct 2021 16:40
    Last Modified: 02 Aug 2023 18:12
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/45900

    Statistics

    Activity Overview
    6 month trend
    86Downloads
    6 month trend
    125Hits

    Additional statistics are available via IRStats2.

    Archive Staff Only (login required)

    Edit/View Item Edit/View Item