Citizen preferences for their legislative body: evidence from the United States

While previous research has evaluated the types of candidates that the public prefers in the US and comparative context, citizens often evaluate the overall legislative body rather than their own specific representative. In this article, we employ a conjoint experiment in the United States to investigate the multidimensional preferences citizens have for Congress, focusing on the branches’ racial and gender composition, legislative behavior, and policy agenda. Our main results generally align with our base expectations of a wider preference for a more racially and gender diverse legislature than the one that currently exists. However, among other divisions, we find clear differences in substantive agenda preferences across racial and partisan lines.