The gender gap in elite-voter responsiveness online

Dickson, Zachary ORCID: 0000-0002-9462-2980 (2024) The gender gap in elite-voter responsiveness online. Perspectives on Politics. ISSN 1537-5927

Text (the-gender-gap-in-elite-voter-responsiveness-online) - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution. Download (5MB)

• Author
• Scopus publication

Abstract

A number of important studies have documented gender gaps in the effectiveness or performance of individual representatives. Yet whether these differences are observable when it comes to responsiveness to public opinion is unclear. In this article, I examine the degree to which representatives use social media to dynamically respond to shifts in issue salience among the electorate. After combining nearly 400 bi-weekly repeated public opinion surveys from YouGov asking voters about their issue priorities, I trained a large language model to classify the universe of elected U.S. and UK representatives’ social media messages on Twitter to the same issues. Findings reveal that women representatives demonstrate greater responsiveness than their male counterparts to shifts in issue salience according to both women and men constituents. Despite an overall bias toward male constituents, female representatives play a crucial role in narrowing the gender gap by consistently aligning their attention with the issues prioritized by female constituents. These findings not only contribute to our understanding of elite-voter responsiveness but also underscore the substantive benefits that women representatives provide for all constituents.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2024 The Author
Divisions:	Methodology Government
Subjects:	J Political Science J Political Science > JF Political institutions (General)
Date Deposited:	28 Aug 2024 11:19
Last Modified:	20 Dec 2024 00:57
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/124891

Actions (login required)

View Item