Politicians' Gender and Voters' Information Seeking in Election Campaigns.
P1-S19-5
Presented by: Maxime Walder
The influence of gender on political decision-making has garnered significant attention, but how does it affect voters' information-seeking behavior? While prior research highlights the role of gender stereotypes in shaping perceptions of politicians' competence across policy domains, less is known about how politicians’ gender drives voters' curiosity and engagement with political information. This paper addresses this gap, leveraging observational clickstream data from a Voting Advice Application and experimental evidence to analyze how politicians’ gender influences voters' information-seeking patterns. Our findings reveal notable gender dynamics. While male voters appear motivated by uncertainty, seeking information about less likely female candidates, female voters focus their searches on female candidates. Moreover, we find that the gender of voters affects not only the volume but also the type of information sought about male and female politicians. These results deepen our understanding of the complex interplay between politicians and voters' gender and its consequence on political information voters seek to make voting decisions during electoral campaigns.
Keywords: Gender, Politicians, information-seeking, clickstream-data, experiment