Issue salience and women’s electoral performance: Theory and evidence from Google trends

In this paper we study, theoretically and empirically, how the belief that the gender of politicians affects their competence on a range of issues may influence electoral out comes depending on the salience of these issues. We propose a model of issue-specific gender bias in elections which can describe both the presence of a real comparative ad vantage (‘kernel-of-truth’ case, or stereotype) and the case of pure prejudice. We show that the bias influences electoral results but it can be partially reversed by successful information transmission during the electoral campaign. We then empirically inves tigate the relation between issue salience and women’s performance, using US data on House and Senate elections. Estimates of issue salience are obtained using Google Trends data. Exploiting the longitudinal dimension of the dataset at district level and an IV strategy to rule out possible endogeneity, we show a positive correlation between the salience of feminine issues and women’s electoral outcomes. The average effect is sizable with respect to the share of votes for women candidates, even if not large enough, on average, to increase the probability that women candidates win elections.