Gendered Backlash Depends on the Context. Reassessing Negative Campaigning Sanctions Against Female Candidates via Large-Scale Comparative Data

On paper, women politicians should be punished more than men when they go negative during election campaigns. Yet, empirical evidence in this sense is surprisingly scarce, and findings offer a muddled picture. In this article, we argue that existing research has, so far, neglected to consider a fundamental intervening factor: the role of the context, and specifically the level of descriptive representation of women in politics. Using novel large-scale data for 700+ candidates having competed in 150+ elections in 94 countries worldwide, we test – and confirm – the expectation that women are especially punished for negative campaigning in countries with low descriptive representation of women in politics. This pattern does not hold in more gender-equal contexts. Additional observational evidence from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) shows that this electoral punishment is likely due to voters expressing lower likability of women candidates (compared to men) when the former go negative in countries where women are less established in political leadership positions. We suggest that inconsistent results in previous studies are likely due to the lack of comparative focus.