Political Parties Win More When More Women Are On Ballots
Monday, April 6, 2015 - 15:20
in Psychology & Sociology
It may be sexist but when more women are on ballots, political parties do better, according to a new paper.Whether or not that is because women will vote for gender over the best candidate is unclear, but it does mean that the belief that people will not vote for women is not true. The authors analyzed changes on municipal election laws in Spain which instituted a quota for female candidates. With other factors being equal, the scholars found that parties that increased their share of female candidates by 10 percentage points more than their opponents enjoyed a 4.2 percentage-point gain at the ballot box, or an outright switch of about 20 votes per 1,000 cast. read more