Candidate Gender and District Ideological Alignment in U.S. Congressional Elections, 2002–2020

Candidate ideology impacts a wide range of electoral outcomes, but are there gendered differences in the effects of candidate ideology? Using a unique dataset of U.S. congressional elections between 2002 and 2020, we examine candidate-level factors (gender, ideology, and partisanship) and district-level political factors (district ideology and partisanship), and the interaction between these candidate and district-level factors. We first compare two measurements of candidate ideology for congressional incumbents of both major parties: absolute extremity and ideological distance from the district. Although there are partisan differences, we generally find that women are more ideologically extreme than men. We then examine how ideological distance from the district impacts three dependent variables, likelihood of running unopposed, vote share, and probability of winning election, and test how candidate gender interacts with ideological distance from the district. We find that incumbent women are less likely to run unopposed and have a lower vote share than incumbent men. Overall, it appears that women congressional candidates may be more ideologically extreme and are more likely to be punished for their ideological positions than men.