Why Party Trumps Gender and Race in Voter Choice

What the Paper Asks

Understanding which candidates voters elect matters for representation and equality. Simon Calmar Andersen and Morten Hjortskov ask why prior studies show mixed effects for candidate gender and race while consistently finding strong effects for party affiliation.

What Lexicographic Preferences Are

The authors propose that voters use lexicographic preferences: they rank candidate attributes and attend first to party affiliation. Attributes like gender and race are treated as second-order criteria — consulted only when party does not break a tie or when party information is absent.

How the Authors Tested the Idea

Andersen and Hjortskov adapt conjoint experiments to diagnose lexicographic decision rules. Using a U.S.-representative conjoint sample and a pre-registered replication, they compare voter choices when party labels differ versus when candidates share the same party or when party information is withheld. Their design shows how choice patterns conditional on party information reveal whether voters apply a strict priority ordering of attributes.

Key Findings

• Party affiliation overwhelmingly dominates vote choice in the U.S. samples.
• Gender and race act as second-order attributes: they influence choices mainly when party does not differentiate options or when party cues are missing.
• The replication confirms these patterns, suggesting the result is robust to pre-registered testing.
• Framing candidate choice as lexicographic helps explain why earlier studies sometimes find effects of gender or race and sometimes do not.

Why This Matters

The paper offers a clear diagnostic for researchers using conjoint designs and a conceptual lens for interpreting inconsistent findings about descriptive representation. For scholars and practitioners, the work implies that candidate strategy and experimental measurement must account for voters' prioritized decision rules if they aim to understand or influence how social identities matter at the ballot box.