Strategic Discrimination in the 2020 Democratic Primary

Abstract

Primary voters frequently support the candidates they think have a greater chance of winning the general election over the candidates who most closely reflect their policy preferences—a perception referred to as “electability.” While electability is typically taken to mean ideological moderation, recent research highlights the potential for candidates’ demographic characteristics to affect such perceptions. Using a conjoint experiment conducted with a sample of nearly 3,000 likely Democratic primary voters in June 2019, we show that women and candidates of color were seen as less electable than their white, male counterparts despite being preferred more frequently, holding policy stances and general election strategies constant. These effects were independent of respondents’ hostile sexism and racial resentment, and mediation analysis indicates that electability concerns reduced overall support for women and candidates of color. The results replicate and extend recent findings related to “strategic discrimination” in the US electorate.