Political candidates can successfully use targeted appeals to increase support from female voters

Recent presidential and congressional elections have featured growing appeals to specific groups, including women. But are these marketing techniques actually effective at persuading women voters? In new research using experiments which test how voters respond to such appeals, Mirya R Holman, Monica C Schneider and Kristin Pondel find that such identity-based targeting makes it more likely that both men and women will vote for a certain candidate. Appeals by women candidates, they write, are also more likely to be effective with women voters, as they activate group identity among women.