Wrong place or wrong party? LGBTQ2S+ candidates and district competitiveness

Abstract

The sacrificial lambs thesis holds that internal processes lead parties to nominate candidates from marginalized groups in unwinnable districts. This thesis was first developed to explain women's underrepresentation, but it has since been applied to other groups. The case of LGBTQ2S+ candidates presents an opportunity to explore whether the distribution of candidates across parties can account for (some of) the sacrificial lambs pattern. Are LGBTQ2S+ candidates sacrificial lambs because they run in less winnable districts than their straight cisgender (cis) counterparts or because less competitive third parties are more likely to nominate them? We reconceptualize the sacrificial lambs pattern as a gap in district competitiveness. Conceptually, we see this gap as having two components: a within-party component (from differences in where parties nominate members of a marginalized group) and a between-party component (from differences in which parties nominate more members of a marginalized group). We illustrate how to decompose the gap using data on LGBTQ2S+ candidates in Canadian elections, 2015–2021. We construct probability-based measures of district competitiveness and then use Kitigawa-Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition to calculate the within- and between-party components. We find large gaps in district competitiveness in 2019 and 2021, the majority of which is attributable to between-party inequalities. Nonetheless, a substantial portion of this inequality reflects within-party inequalities. Our results suggest that efforts to improve LGBTQ2S+ representation will need to address between-party inequalities in addition to the more traditional focus on within-party inequalities. Our approach could be used to study other groups in other contexts.