Congressional campaign website data show gender differences in political campaign negativity

In this article, author Marshall E. Taylor noted that US congressional candidates often use their campaign websites to make personal details available, since personalized political communication online can increase voters’ sense that there is an intimate connection with the candidate. But revealing a candidate’s life experiences, family background, and job history could provide their opponent with a chance to spin the candidate’s political identity in a negative way. Marshall wanted to investigate whether candidates who share personal details on their campaign websites are more likely to be attacked by opponents, and whether that is affected by the candidate’s gender. He used the Congressional Candidate Websites (ICPSR 34895) study, which contains data for quantitative content analysis gleaned from hundreds of congressional campaign websites during the 2002, 2004, and 2006 election cycles. Created to better understand campaign behavior, the study’s unit of analysis is the individual candidate in an individual race, including the universe of major party Senate candidates, as well as a random sample, stratified by state and district, of House candidates. The dataset contains a range of candidate-level information like gender, challenger status, party affiliation, fundraising amounts, campaign websites’ use of technology, endorsements, issue positions, image promotion, personal and family biographical information, and negative commentary.

After exclusions, Marshall used an analytical sample of 690 campaigns for 604 candidates. He found that for female candidates, providing more personal information on their candidate websites predicted higher levels of negativity from rivals. However, this same link was not found for male candidates. Marshall suggested his findings imply that “going personal is risky,” especially for women, due to existing gender biases. For instance, media coverage already tends to personalize female candidates more than male candidates, focusing less on the issues and more on their families and appearance when critiquing their viability as candidates.