This paper examines the contexts and conditions under which voters will gravitate toward candidates like themselves, as well as what bases of “sameness” matter most. We draw on the political psychology literature to tease out various explanations for race and gender affinity, focusing on social identity theory, group conflict theory, and cognitive shortcutting. Our paper presents data from a unique online survey of 2,500 white and visible minority voters in Canada. This survey asked respondents to choose between prototypical candidates—including a white man, white woman, Chinese man and Chinese woman—as well as to evaluate the extent to which each candidate could be trusted and would understand their problems. We marry the experimental data with observational data on contextual factors.
