Exploring the Impact of Disability on Political Candidate Perception

Voters often evaluate political candidates based on cues linked to social identities such as gender, social status, or ethnicity, which also interacts with voter’s own identity. One less-studied identity so far is disability. We examine this question through a vignette experiment conducted in Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, and Spain, with about 2000 participants per country. Participants read a news article about a candidate, and the design randomly varies the candidate’s disability status and gender. Respondents then evaluate the candidate on vote choice and perceptions of their personality traits. We find that disabled voters are more likely to vote for disabled candidates, and in contrast to stereotypical expectations, candidates with disabilities are evaluated with more positive traits by non-disabled participants and are generally seen as more caring. The experiment allows us to assess how different disabilities shape voters’ evaluations of candidates, as well as how respondents’ own disability identity conditions these perceptions. The results will contribute to our understanding of the mechanisms behind the descriptive representation of disabled citizens, and more broadly, of how social identities structure political behavior.