… We wanted to know whether attitudes that can be measured as “sexist” — meaning beliefs that women are less capable than men and overly sensitive to slights — are influencing Democratic voters’ choice about whether to support a female candidate in the 2020 Democratic primaries. For instance, when Democrats worry about whether a candidate is “electable” — i.e., whether others would vote for him or her against Donald Trump — are they actually voicing their own discomfort about voting for women? Do these voters in reality see female candidates as inferior to male alternatives?
Twice, we surveyed 602 Americans online who said that they would be voting in the Democratic presidential primary or caucus in their state in 2020, via YouGov. We first interviewed a larger nationally representative sample of Americans in September and October 2018, having them answer a series of questions that are part of the hostile sexism battery — a scale developed by social psychologists Peter Glick and Susan Fiske to measure prejudice and hostility toward women. CONT.
Sam Luks (YouGov) & Brian Schaffner (Tufts), Monkey Cage