Messages matter: how voter education campaigns affect citizens’ willingness to vote for women

Ofosu, George ORCID: 0000-0003-4112-0749, Bech Seeberg, Merete and Wahman, Michael (2024) Messages matter: how voter education campaigns affect citizens’ willingness to vote for women. Journal of Politics. ISSN 0022-3816 (In Press)

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Abstract

Governments and organizations around the world pour money into campaigns designed to increase female political representation, including voter education campaigns. But do such campaigns promote women in politics? We argue that where single-member district contests and clientelism incentivize voters to support viable candidates - who are both likely to get elected and to perform well once in office - information about discrimination against women can undercut support for women in elections. Instead, messages that stress women candidates’ electoral viability and political successes are more effective. We work with one of the longest-running voter education campaigns, Malawi’s 50:50 campaign, to combine randomized exposure to campaign videos with a conjoint experiment and text analysis of respondents’ answers to open-ended questions. We find that exposure to a campaign message makes participants more willing to vote for a woman. But, in line with our argument, a campaign message that includes information about the progress of women in politics has a stronger positive effect than one that discloses information about discrimination against women candidates.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2024
Divisions:	Government
Subjects:	J Political Science H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman
Date Deposited:	27 Aug 2024 14:30
Last Modified:	14 Sep 2024 10:15
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/124683

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