The Gender Penalty in Turkish Politics: Social Media Campaign Efforts and Candidate Renomination

This paper examines whether campaign efforts of candidates for general elections are rewarded equally by political parties in Turkey. Leveraging the twin elections of 2015, we investigate whether social media campaign efforts affect the renomination prospects and list positions of male and female candidates similarly. We collected biographical and political career information for 2,200 candidates, as well as their Twitter messages during the campaign period. Preliminary findings suggest a gender penalty. As the frequency of female candidates' social media campaigns increases, their prospects for renomination decrease, whereas this effect is reversed for male candidates. Male candidates' prospects for renomination increase with the frequency of their social media campaigns. Our analysis did not find a statistically significant difference for female and male candidates' campaign efforts on their list position.