The Decline of Identity Voting? Politicians' Socio-Demographic Characteristics and Voter Attitudes and Behaviour

This chapter reviews and reconsiders the relationship between politicians’ social identities and voting behaviour. A long tradition of research shows that voters’ evaluations of politicians’ traits, beliefs, and competences are influenced by stereotypes about politicians’ identities, such as gender, sexuality, class, disability, race/ethnicity, and religion, as well as the intersections between them. Yet, more recent evidence suggests that voter bias, where voters are less likely to vote for candidates from certain groups, is either limited or highly conditional on ideology, context, and the activation of stereotypes, challenging earlier assumptions that candidates with certain identities were inherently disadvantaged in elections. At the same time, political parties, particularly on the Right, have increasingly diversified their candidate pools, even where electoral incentives to do so seem limited. We argue that these trends are unlikely to signify a decline in the importance of personality politics; rather, both politicians and parties are strategic about their use and framing of politicians’ identities. Politicians from marginalised groups strategically distance themselves from group-associated positions to expand their electoral appeal. Parties include marginalised groups among decision-makers to either lend credibility to policies benefitting these groups or legitimise policies that may undermine group interests. Understanding how marginalised identities are mobilised in political competition is essential not only for advancing scholarly debates on representation, but also for informing public awareness of the instrumentalisation of identities and mitigating the normalisation of exclusionary policies.