Are right-wing populist voters against women?

Observational and experimental studies show that voters are on average not biased against women in their vote choice (Bridgewater and Nagel 2020; Dassonville et al. 2021; Dolan 2014; Hayes and Lawless 2016; Schwarz and Coppock 2022). However, gender bias among voter may be conditional on partisanship. This study leverages existing data from candidate choice experiments to study whether right-wing populist voters and strongly conservative voters display a bias against women candidates in their vote. We systematically search and collect individual-level data from experiments in which the gender of fictional political candidates was varied, and respondents’ partisanship or ideological position was known. The moderating effect of partisanship has been studied in a meta-analysis of such experiments from the US (Schwarz and Coppock 2022), but not outside the US. By including studies from Europe and elsewhere, we extend the external validity of those results, but more importantly, we are able to zoom in on more specific subgroups of voters: right-wing populists and conservatives at the extreme end of the spectrum.