There is much less gender bias against women candidates than election-year anecdotes would have us believe

As the 2016 elections draw closer, discussions of how Hillary Clinton’s gender will affect her presidential prospects have grown more frequent and frenzied. Using a two-wave panel survey, Kathleen Dolan examines how gender stereotypes actually affect voters’ decisions at the polls. She finds no evidence that beliefs about women in the abstract lead voters to evaluate individual candidates differently than their male opponents. Instead, the decision to vote for a female candidate depends on whether the voter shares her political party.