Not in His Image: The Moderating Effect of Gender on Religious Appeals

Religious appeals have been part and parcel of campaign strategy for decades. Most often, however, these appeals to have come from men, but little is known about how women would fare using religious appeals on the campaign trail. To remedy this, we used an experimental design to examine voter reacti...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Calfano, Brian Robert 1977- (Author) ; Djupe, Paul A. 1971- (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Cambridge Univ. Press [2011]
In: Politics and religion
Year: 2011, Volume: 4, Issue: 2, Pages: 338-354
Online Access: Volltext (Resolving-System)
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Description
Summary:Religious appeals have been part and parcel of campaign strategy for decades. Most often, however, these appeals to have come from men, but little is known about how women would fare using religious appeals on the campaign trail. To remedy this, we used an experimental design to examine voter reaction to religious appeals from a female and a male candidate competing for an open United States Senate seat. We find that women's use of religious appeals is governed by the dynamics of tokenism — reinforcing traditional gender stereotypes and serving to reduce voter support of the female candidate. This suggests that women must be careful in using a key campaign tool traditionally employed by men, and that this may affect the extent to which female candidates can effectively shape voter perceptions on the campaign trail.
ISSN:1755-0491
Contains:Enthalten in: Politics and religion
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1017/S1755048311000149