The Gender Content of Senate Campaign Advertisements

This chapter explores themes in the campaign advertising of Senate candidates and their allies in the 2016 general election. It details the ways in which Democrats sought to tie their opponents to Donald Trump, highlighting Trump’s more offensive statements, and alleging that their opponents were “weak” or unmanly in their response to Trump. It also examines the extent to which Republican candidates sought to distance themselves from Donald Trump’s campaign in their ads, and how campaigns on both sides sought to tie their opponents to Trump and Clinton. The chapter pays particular attention to explicit and implicit references to gender and gender norms. It also examines whether particular ads were aimed at influencing particular demographic groups (men, women) by activating gender-normative expectations about candidates, in both positive ads and attack ads.

Does Gender Matter in Elections?

This chapter provides the theoretical context for the study by exploring whether and how gender usually matters in campaigns and elections, and the ways in which the 2016 election was different in this regard. The chapter presents the literature on voter preferences for male and female candidates, the impact of gender stereotypes on voting, and the way campaigns and advertisers make use of these stereotypes when trying to promote their candidates or undermine their opponents. The chapter devotes particular attention to recent claims that women are not disadvantaged in contemporary American elections, and it explores ways in which this finding might be applied to the 2016 presidential election, the first to feature a female general election nominee.

Introduction

The book begins by laying out a story about the impact of the presidential race on the congressional races in 2016. At the center of this story lie two unanticipated developments that characterized the 2016 election. The first of these was the unusual centrality of sexism and gender stereotypes to the presidential race in 2016. In a society that appears, by some measures, to have taken strides toward greater gender equality, what happened in Congressional campaigns when “retrograde” views on gender unexpectedly emerged in the competition for the presidency? The second unexpected occurrence was the nomination of Donald Trump as the Republican Party’s presidential candidate, and the subsequent assumption that he would lose the presidential contest to Hillary Clinton. What impact did this development have on Congressional campaigns? Congressional candidates in the 2016 election found themselves in a fairly novel situation generated by the presidential race: gender issues became central to the presidential campaign, and, in turn, to the entire election process.

Conclusion

The book concludes with some thoughts on the differential impact that gender norms may have on presidential-level elections compared to those at lower levels of office. The chapter offers further reflections about the dynamics of down-ballot candidates’ responses to the presidential race, asking what these campaigns say about the effectiveness of gender-normative appeals and tactics, and about the ways in which the American party system is capable, given the recent trend toward political polarization, of allowing candidates to distance themselves from their parties and their parties’ presidential candidates. And finally, the conclusion looks at the tendency to use gender-normative masculinity—in the form of homophobia—as a means of making fun of Trump in the post-election period, and explain why doing so, even against a hypermasculine politician—can reinforce gender inequality in the long run.

In the Shadow of Trump

This chapter explores the impact of presidential primary campaigns on House and Senate primary races, looking at the relationship between presidential and nonpresidential primaries, and evaluating the effect Donald Trump had on candidate emergence and strategy. Few candidates wished to associate themselves with Trump, yet the Republican presidential primary so dominated media and public attention that Republican primary candidates who might have flourished in any other year, such as conservative, Tea Party–style candidates, were unable to garner attention or raise as much money as they might otherwise have. Moreover, even in the handful of primary races featuring so-called “mini-Trumps,” there were few in which attention to gender issues or misogynist rhetoric played a role. The chapter documents these findings by comparing 2016 to prior election years with regard to primary competition, turnout, and spending, and examining congressional primaries in which Republican candidates were overtly compared to or endorsed Donald Trump.

Donald Trump versus Hillary Clinton

This chapter provides details regarding the gender dynamics of the presidential primaries and general election campaign in 2016, in order to show how these phases of the presidential contest set the stage for and affected the down-ballot races. It reviews the various ways in which gender became a central theme in the presidential election and in the public discourse surrounding the election, and considers Trump’s rhetoric in the context of hypermasculine politicians’ behavior in other countries. It also describes in detail how the Republican primary deteriorated into a peculiarly graphic masculinity contest, and how Trump’s tendency toward bigoted and misogynist comments provided fuel for the Clinton campaign and its supporters, and set the stage for Republican down-ballot candidates to respond to the “Trump factor” in their own campaigns.

Running with a “Loser”

This chapter explores the effects of Donald Trump’s nomination on the conduct of Senate and House general election campaigns. Trump’s nomination prompted many Republican donors and interest groups to decrease their spending on the presidential race and increase their spending in support of other candidates. The chapter documents the effects of this rapid shift in resources on down-ballot campaigns, and compares 2016 to a variety of previous presidential elections in order to explore past Democratic and Republican strategies for insulating congressional candidates from problematic presidential nominees. The chapter shows how Republican donors and candidates distanced themselves from Trump (applying the lessons they had learned from past elections), and why they did so. Trump’s misogyny played an important role in the latter question, as many Republican candidates broke with Trump after the Access Hollywood tape emerged in October 2016.