The data are taken from the 2014 Local Election Candidate Study (LECS). The local election was held on the 23rd of May with the study being carried out in the weeks that followed. Candidates’ information
was gathered from the notices of poll that were made available online by each municipal district of every local council. The notice of poll provides a candidate’s name, address, party affiliation, and – in most cases – occupation. In all there were 2022 candidates contesting 949 council seats at the 2014 local election but only 2007 mailings were completed since 13 addresses could not be verified, one candidate stood down due to controversy before the date of the election but after the notices of poll had been published, and one candidate passed away. A reminder postcard was sent to any candidate who had not responded three weeks after their initial survey had been sent. Six questionnaires proved to be undeliverable but a total of 810 usable questionnaires were returned for a response rate of 40.06 percent. Of the candidates who took part in the study 186 or 22.96 percent were women and 514 (63.46%) were incumbents. 46.91 percent of the sample was successfully elected to one of the 31 local authorities; this means that 40.04 percent of current local councillors are included in the LECS sample.
There are six dependent variables: five measure distinct aspects of the electoral campaign and thus test Hypothesis 1. The sixth dependent variable measures the difference between expectations and the reality of the campaign; it is employed in order to test Hypothesis 2. Respondents were asked to rate on a five point Likert scale the extent to which they felt comfortable engaging in particular campaign activities. A variable takes value one if the respondent reported being very uncomfortable and value five if he or she reported feeling very comfortable. The aspects that the respondents were asked to assess were the following: a) soliciting campaign contributions b) dealing with party officials c) going door-to-door to meet constituents d) dealing with members of the press and e) participating in a negative campaign. Respondents were also free to select a ‘did not apply’ option for each of the campaign activities if they were not relevant (for example, non-party candidates did not have to deal with party officials). These campaign activities are taken from the Comparative Candidates Survey (discussed below) which surveys general election candidates in a variety of countries on a variety of issues, including the campaign in which they participated. These five campaign areas are also identical to those used by Fox and Lawless in their 2011 paper (discussed above) which examines beliefs of men and women about their ability to engage in campaign mechanics.
58 The sixth dependent variable, difference between perceptions prior to entering the campaign and the actual experience of conducting a campaign, is measured by asking respondents the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with the following statement: ‘on the whole I found campaigning more difficult than I expected.’ This is again a Likert-type variable measured on a five-point scale which takes value one if the respondent strongly disagrees and value five if the respondent strongly agrees. Table 2.2 presents the gender differences across the six dependent variables.
We can see from this table that the mean differences between men and women are in the expected direction across for four of the six dependent variables. The mean level of comfort in engaging in four campaign activities (soliciting donations, dealing with party officials, dealing with the press, and participating in a negative campaign). Contrary to our expectations, the mean level of comfort reported by women when meeting with constituents is higher for women than for men. In addition, the mean level of agreement for the sixth dependent variable (testing the hypothesis that female candidates will be more likely to report having expected the campaign experience to be more difficult than it actually was) is actually lower for women that it is for men. Again, this is contrary to the expectations laid out in Section 2.2 above. The multivariate analysis investigates whether such differences are statistically significant. A number of independent variables are included in these regression models. They are described below.
The key independent variable is of course gender. It takes value one if the respondent is female and zero otherwise. Since other factors are expected to matter for evaluations of the campaign, additional variables were included.
Since prior campaign experience is likely to influence the experience of the 2014 campaign, a dummy variable is included to account for whether the respondent has run for office previously. It takes value one if the candidate has previously run for office at any level, and value zero otherwise. This is also a proxy for political experience though it is not ideal. Information regarding the year in which the individual joined their political party is available in the dataset, however employing this as a measure of political experience would necessitate removing independents from the sample and thus unavoidably reducing the sample size. As a result previous candidacy has been used instead.
Political experience can be thought of as a resource that should make the campaign easier to negotiate and should result in more positive evaluations. Other resources include the size of the campaign team and also whether the candidate comes from a political family. Size of campaign team is measured by
Table 2.2. Gender differences in campaign evaluations – LECS 2014 sample
Men Women
Mean Median n Mean Median n
H1
Soliciting donations 2.16 2 304 2.09 2 112
Dealing with party officials 4.02 5 392 3.97 4.5 138
Meeting constituents 4.26 5 606 4.32 5 182
Dealing with the press 4.09 4 576 3.71 4 173
Participating in a negative campaign 2.18 2 277 2.08 2 72
asking respondents ‘how many people were on your campaign team?’ Responses ranged from zero to a maximum of 125, with 14 being the median team size. With respect to coming from a political family, it is well-documented that in Ireland those who are elected to political office frequently have familial political connections, particularly those running as Fianna Fáil candidates (Reidy, 2011; 2016). Coming from a political family should prepare candidates for the realities of the campaign. Certainly, Fawcett (1992) underlines the importance of family political connections in her study of Fine Gael women running at local level in Ireland. Having such connections might matter in particular for Hypothesis 2 which relates to a gap in expectations prior to starting the campaign and the actual experience, but also because it could give access to social networks. These networks help the candidate to mount a campaign while also conferring name recognition which should be an advantage at the ballot box. This variable takes value one if any family member has previously held political office at any level, and value zero otherwise.
Party controls are included in addition to measures of resources available to candidates for two main reasons. Firstly, the campaign experience may differ across parties simply because the public is more or less hostile to that party. As has been noted above, Fianna Fáil has historically done worse at local level by comparison with its general election performance, while independent candidates have over- performed (Gallagher, 1989; Weeks & Quinlivan, 2009), so we might expect evaluations of the campaign experience to be generally lower for Fianna Fáil candidates but higher for non-party ones. However, it is also true that local elections have typically been used as a barometer of the popularity of the government as well as a means to deliver a shock to the parties in power (Weeks & Quinlivan, 2009; Quinlivan & Weeks, 2010; Loughlin, 2012), so it may be that evaluations from Labour Party and Fine Gael candidates will be lower. It is important therefore to control for this. Secondly, although the size of the campaign team is included in order to control for personnel, campaign workers are not the only resources that parties provide10; informal resources from mentors and colleagues within the
parties are expected to matter also. It is expected that party colleagues would provide valuable information and advice about how best to go about mounting a campaign; this is something that independents are not expected to have access to. And this informal support is not expected to be undifferentiated. As has already been noted above, smaller parties and parties of the left have typically been more accommodating to female candidacies. Such parties are likely either to be free from the type of entrenched interests that may cause issues for female candidates or to have networks in place that aim to support women’s candidacies; the Labour Party is an example of the latter in that it has a strong women’s network. By contrast, Fine Gael, which has recently disbanded its Women’s Group, has had a difficult history with that body; in 2012 its chairperson resigned, arguing that members of
10 This is assuming that some of the campaign team are working at the behest of the party. In reality, many of those who have canvassed for the candidates may have been friends and family without party ties.
61 the group “were to be seen and not heard, especially at executive level” (RTE, 2014). The party controls are therefore expected to account for the different attitudes that parties may have towards female candidates, which should be reflected in the extent to which parties are offering support to their female candidates. Due to the low number of respondents from several of the smaller parties, these individuals were grouped together. The party categories are therefore as follows: Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, Labour Party, Sinn Féin, other party (including the Green Party, the United Left Alliance, and People Before Profit), and non-party or independent.
A final individual-level variable is included to account for the fact that subjective measures of the campaign experience are being used. Personality traits can be expected to impact the candidates’ evaluations of the campaign experience. Defined as a “dynamic and organised set of characteristics of a person that uniquely influences his or her cognitions, motivations, and behaviours” (Ryckman, 1997, p.5), personality traits are found to be particularly good predictors of individuals’ behaviour in ‘weak situations’ where they have scope to determine how to act (Seibert, Krant & Kraimer, 1999). These traits have been linked to ability of individuals to perform in particular occupations, to the way in which they feel about these occupations (Sutin et al., 2009; Gelissen & de Graaf, 2006; Bozionelos, 2003, 2004; Loundsbury et al., 2004; Ng et al., 2005), and also to their evaluations of particular events (Ajzen, 2005; Mischel, 2013). Although data were collected on all of the traits in the Five Factor Model (openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism), for reasons of parsimony, a single item capturing respondent self-esteem is included in the models. As a predictor of behaviour, level of self-esteem should influence the way in which the candidates approach campaign activities and thus the extent to which they feel comfortable engaging in them. In addition, self-esteem is expected to impact perceptions of the campaign itself. A person who reports a higher level of self-esteem may have an easier time on the campaign trail since he would be more comfortable engaging with certain individuals (party members, members of the press, the electorate). However, we also know that people with high self-esteem will tend to exaggerate their qualities and levels of success (see Baumeister et al., 2003). Therefore a respondent may report feeling more comfortable on the campaign trail despite not actually having had an easier time than his fellow candidates precisely because he is predisposed to positively evaluate his actions. It is important then to control for this. Reported level of self-esteem is measured on a five point scale with respondents being asked to state the extent to which they agree or disagree with the following statement: ‘I see myself as someone who has high self-esteem’.
Finally, we expect candidates’ evaluations of how the campaign went to be influenced by some characteristics of the campaign that they were running in. Two additional variables are added to the model in order to capture this. Firstly, a control for the number of women running in the district is
62 added. We expect that the number of women running might alter the nature of the contest, not that it will alter it in a specific way. It might be the case that having more women running might make the contest more congenial for candidates in general (if female candidates behave in a friendlier manner towards their competitors). Or the reverse might be true; having more female candidates might put pressure on existing female candidates, thus making the contest more difficult for them. Having few women in the race might allow them to gain some benefit from being recognisable simply by virtue of the fact that they are not men. Adding more women might reduce this benefit substantially and could lead to women competing with one another for a handful of seats that will typically go to women. This idea that increasing the number of women running in a particular municipal district will change the nature of the campaign itself is a logical extension of critical mass theory, discussed in Chapter One, which follows from Kanter’s (1977) paper.
We include an additional variable to capture the environment that candidates face in the district in which they are running. This variable is computed by dividing the total number of candidates by the number of seats to be filled and acts as a very rough measure of district competiveness (see Kuklinski, 1977). Typically measured in single-member district as the margin of victory, other measures of electoral or district competitiveness have been proposed. Blais and Lago (2009) operationalize district competitiveness as the minimum number of additional votes required, under existing rules, for a party to win one additional seat, a measure which can be employed under PR and majoritarian rules. Niemi, Jackman and Winsky (1991) suggest that multi-member districts can also be dealt with by pairing candidates to create pseudo single-member districts and looking at competitiveness between the pairs. These measures are of course post hoc. Since this chapter is concerned with what is happening during the campaign prior to the vote, it instead treats competitive districts as those where there is a high number of candidates per seat running in the district. The idea is that where there are more people running a candidate will have to work harder to distinguish himself or herself from the other competitors, something which may require more media exposure, and more financial resources for example. Of course, this measure does not take account of the extent to which candidates are viable. Independent candidates with access to few resources do not represent much of a threat to well- equipped party candidates so if many of these are contesting in a single district then we are likely overestimating the extent to which that district is competitive. By contrast, if popular incumbents with ample party support are running in a district then it is not very competitive since these candidates are likely to be returned. The measure then is a rough one.
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