Men Are from Mars in Politics, Too
NEGATIVE MESSAGES MAKE GREATER INROADS WITH MALES, WHILE WOMEN RESPOND TO A MORE POSITIVE PERSUASION STRATEGY. WILL PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES TAKE THIS INTO ACCOUNT?by Vincenzo Galasso, Dept. of Policy Analysis and Public Management, Bocconi
Translated by Alex Foti
In November, there will be the first mixed gender US presidential election ever: Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump. But the election race will go down in history not just for the gender of the candidates. Also the style of contenders is important. Lacking the support of the establishment of the Republican Party, Donald Trump has chosen a very extreme campaigning style, where he directly addressed voters, and criticized everyone else, including the Pope. On the other hand, Hillary Clinton enjoys the support of the Democratic establishment and has chosen a less harsh, but also less incisive, political message.
What kind of campaign can we expect for the grand finale? One of the most critical aspects of electoral campaigns concerns the tone. And in recent decades, the tone of US presidential elections has always been negative, especially in the weeks preceding the vote. Also the amount of allocated resources to finance negative advertising has been steadily on the rise. And this year’s primaries confirmed the trend, especially with regard to Donald Trump. Evidently, the spin doctors are convinced that a negative campaign will help mobilize the electorate and wrest votes from the rival.
A recent research study looks at the impact of a campaign’s tone - positive or negative - on the choices of voters. The study makes use of an experiment conducted in Milan during the 2011 mayoral elections, which saw the woman incumbent being challenged by a male candidate. Empirical findings from this experiment point to the fact that there are great gender differences in responding to alternative strategies of political persuasion.
Negative publicity increased turnout of voters by about 8 percent, but had no effects on female voters. Gender differences were even starker when it came to voting behavior. Women were more likely to vote for the male challenger, if they had been exposed to his positive campaign. The exact opposite was true for men: those who were hit by the positive messages of the opponent voted less for him (-11 percent) and more for the female incumbent.
âžœ A candidate’s gender does not count
Could the strong gender difference in electoral response be due to the two candidates’ differing genders? The Milan municipal elections of 2011 were a mixed gender electoral race. Women voters could have identified with the female mayor in office, thus adversely responding to the negative campaign of the male opponent. To assess the gender identity motive, the study made use of a natural experiment. During an election debate on Sky TV, the woman mayor in office violently attacked the male candidate by accusing him of having been sympathetic to left-wing terrorism in his youth. The debate was aired while the third
mayoral polls were underway. So it was possible to compare the answers of individuals who responded before the debate with those who responded after having viewed the debate. Also in this case, men and women had opposite reactions. Men had a positive view of the outgoing mayor who had heaped negativity on his opponent, while women empathized with the (male) candidate who had fallen victim of so-called black propaganda.
Thus gender identification with a candidate does not seem to be a major mechanism in determining voting outcomes. Men and women respond differently to messages of political persuasion, regardless of the gender of the candidate. During the final stages of an election campaign, it is therefore important to send messages that are differentiated according to the chosen gender target of voters.
