A risk venture? Investigating the "electability" challenge for women candidates in US elections

"Electability" has been of great interest in media coverage and popular conceptions of recent elections, but there is little scholarly consensus on what electability is, and whether and how it influences voter behavior. This study seeks to fill that gap in the literature by analyzing polling data from the 2020 Democratic presidential primary to investigate whether voters make decisions in primaries based upon whom they believe can win a general election. Furthermore, this paper analyzes whether such decisions systematically disadvantage women candidates, which would suggest that gender bias plays a role in which candidates are viewed as electable. Using a series of regression analyses, this paper concludes that voters do in fact believe women are less likely than men to win general elections, and therefore voters are less likely to vote for women in primary elections even when they would ultimately prefer a woman to hold the contested office. This pattern of behavior suggests the possibility for an increased role of political and media elites to change the narrative around electability in order to reduce the gender gap in elective office, allowing women to run the most effective campaigns possible without having to prove to voters that they are electable.