The Inverted Hierarchy: How Public Bias Can Favor Potential Indigenous Candidates

Abstract Indigenous communities have long been marginalized and underrepresented in democracies, yet we know little about how publics evaluate Indigenous people who are thinking of running as candidates. Using two experimental surveys with nationally representative samples of Australian adults, we examine how citizens assess the personality traits of eight women and men who are interested in running for office. All eight have identical biographies, other than the fact that they are from White, Chinese, and both dark-skinned and light-skinned Indigenous Australian backgrounds. Surprisingly, we find an inverted hierarchy of bias, moderated by respondent ideology, in which darker-skinned Indigenous potential candidates fare better than all others. Although this may be due to a positive violation of expectations, our results have implications for theories about how people view Indigenous and ethnic minority aspirant politicians. They also point to the need for further research globally into how the public and parties evaluate Indigenous candidates.