Replication Data for: Male and Female Candidates Are Similarly Persistent After Losing Elections

Are women more likely to quit politics after losing their first race than men? Women's first-time candidacies skyrocketed in the wake of the 2016 presidential election. Yet we have little sense of the long-term impact of this surge in women candidates on women's representation writ large: inexperienced candidates are more likely to lose, and women might be especially discouraged by a loss. This might make the benefits of such a surge in candidacies fleeting. Using a regression discontinuity design and data that feature 212,805 candidates across 22,473 jurisdictions between 1950 and 2018, we find that women who narrowly lose these elections are no more likely to quit politics than men who narrowly lose. Drawing on scholarship on women's lower political ambition, we interpret these findings to mean that women’s decision-making differs from men's at the point of entry into politics---not at the point of re-entry.女性在首次参选失利后，是否比男性更有可能退出政坛？2016年美国总统选举后，女性首次参选的人数大幅激增。然而我们对此次女性参选热潮对女性整体参政状况的长期影响仍知之甚少：缺乏从政经验的参选者本就更易失利，而女性或许会因参选失利遭受更为沉重的打击，这或将使得此次参选热潮带来的利好转瞬即逝。本研究采用断点回归设计（Regression Discontinuity Design），使用1950年至2018年间覆盖22473个选举辖区、涉及212805名参选者的数据集进行分析后发现：在选举中以微弱劣势失利的女性，其退出政坛的概率并不高于同样以微弱劣势失利的男性。结合关于女性政治抱负普遍偏低的相关研究成果，我们将上述结论解读为：女性与男性的决策差异仅体现在初次从政参选阶段，而非再次参选阶段。