Replication Data for Women and Left-wing Citizens Prefer Women Candidates: Testing Consistency and Psychological Processes Across Twenty Diverse Countries

Across the world, women remain underrepresented in politics. Yet, recent experimental studies of candidate preferences find that citizens favor women over men candidates, with women and left-wing citizens driving aggregate preferences. This raises both theoretical and empirical puzzles. Theoretically, the underlying processes producing heterogeneous preferences across citizens’ gender and ideology remain unaddressed, and empirically, conclusions rest primarily on data from the United States and Western Europe, which raises questions about generalizability to democracies in the Global South and other regions. This paper reports the results from the most comprehensive and geographically diverse test of citizens’ preferences for women candidates to date. We fielded a conjoint candidate choice experiment with a multitude of respondent-level predispositions (e.g., gender, ideology, sexism, and gender typicality) across twenty institutionally, culturally, and economically diverse democracies (N = 14,369). The results advance knowledge about citizens’ preferences for women candidates both empirically and theoretically. On average, women candidates are preferred by 3 percentage points, and this advantage is statistically significant in fourteen countries. Women—especially those identifying as more gender typical—and left-wing citizens—especially individuals low in social dominance orientation, right-wing authoritarianism, and hostile sexism—display particularly strong preferences for women candidates. These results are discussed with respect to their theoretical and practical implications for women’s political representation.全球范围内，女性在政治领域的代表性仍显不足。然而，近期针对候选人偏好的实验研究表明，选民更青睐女性候选人而非男性候选人，且这种整体偏好倾向由女性选民与左翼选民主导。这一现象同时引发了理论与实证层面的双重谜题：从理论层面来看，解释选民性别与意识形态维度下异质性偏好形成的内在机制仍未得到厘清；从实证层面而言，现有结论主要基于美国与西欧的数据，这使得研究结论能否推广至全球南方（Global South）及其他地区的民主国家存疑。 本研究报告了迄今为止针对选民女性候选人偏好的覆盖范围最广、地理多样性最强的检验结果。我们在20个制度、文化与经济水平各异的民主国家开展了联合候选人选举实验（conjoint candidate choice experiment），收集了涵盖性别、意识形态、性别主义（sexism）与性别典型性等在内的大量受访者个体先置倾向数据，样本量达14369。 本研究从实证与理论两方面推进了学界对选民女性候选人偏好的认知。平均而言，女性候选人的支持率较男性高出3个百分点，且这一优势在14个国家中具有统计学显著性。女性选民——尤其是自认为更具性别典型性的群体——与左翼选民——尤其是社会支配倾向（social dominance orientation）较低、右翼威权主义（right-wing authoritarianism）较弱且敌意性别歧视（hostile sexism）程度较轻的个体——对女性候选人表现出尤为强烈的支持偏好。最后，本文就上述研究发现对女性政治代表性的理论与实践启示展开了讨论。