The Persistence of Prejudice: Voters Strongly Penalize Candidates with HIV

Candidate Identity and Campaign Priming: Analyzing Voter Support for Pete Buttigieg’s Presidential Run as an Openly Gay Man

“…In 2020, voters slightly penalized Buttigieg for being in a same-sex relationship. Our results reveal smaller penalties than the ones observed for gay politicians in earlier work (Golebiowska 2001;Haider-Markel 2010) and in studies considering hypothetical candidates (Magni and Reynolds 2021a). However, while other recent findings have suggested that sexual orientation is no longer penalizing when partisanship is taken into account (Haider-Markel et al 2020;Loepp and Redman 2020), our study cautions that the level of outness influences the discrimination experienced by sexual minority candidates.…”

“…18 In addition to socio-demographic characteristics, we consider voter characteristics that previous work has identified as factors influencing support for LGBTQ candidates. These include partisanship, ideology, religiosity, familiarity with LGBTQ people, and voters' sexual orientation (Haider-Markel 2010;Flores 2015;Garretson 2015;Flores, Brown, and Park 2016;Ayoub and Garretson 2017;Haider-Markel et al 2017;Reynolds 2018;Jones et al 2018;Jones and Brewer 2019;Turnbull-Dugarte 2020;Magni and Reynolds 2021a;2021b). Support for Buttigieg does not vary substantially across treatments among Democrats and Republicans.…”

“…When these judgements about the electorate are amplified, they lead to strategic discrimination (Bateson 2020). The decision of some voters not to support an LGBTQ candidate because they believe such a candidate has limited support in other sectors of the electorate (Magni and Reynolds 2021a) creates a self-fulfilling prophecy that may prevent the election of LGBTQ candidates.…”

“…The disconfirmation of expectations can suppress ingroup cue taking and support, leading voters to be more critical in processing political information (Johnston et al 2015). In the specific case, voters may expect a gay candidate to be Democratic, progressive, and non-religious, given that LGBTQ candidates are often perceived as more liberal and less religious (Magni and Reynolds 2021a). A gay religious candidate, therefore, would violate voter expectations.…”

“…Our study builds on the literature that explores voter reactions to LGBTQ candidates (Golebiowska 2001; Haider-Markel 2010; Haider-Markel et al 2017; 2020; Jones et al 2018; Magni and Reynolds 2018; 2021a; Magni 2020). We advance previous work in several ways.…”