Preferences for electoral quotas: attitudes toward underrepresented groups and support for gender and racial quotas

Quotas to address the political underrepresentation of marginalized groups have flourished worldwide. The diffusion of gender quotas has been particularly prominent, and this type of policy is now present in over 130 countries. Similarly to women, other groups underrepresented in politics are also not necessarily minorities in the population but minoritized. This is the case of Afro-Brazilians, who correspond to 56% of the Brazilian population but occupy only 24% of seats in the lower house of the country’s national parliament. Existing work has identified key factors shaping support for gender quotas. In theory, principles of equality should mean that the same factors that prompt support for gender quotas should also explain support for policies to address the underrepresentation of other equally sizable groups. But this may not be the case: in various surveys, we find that voters’ support for racial quotas for political office is lower than their support for gender quotas. Employing data from two survey experiments and ten focus groups with Brazilian voters, we explore the factors that shape voters’ lower levels of support for racial quotas.