Black women are underrepresented at elected office of all levels. However, even in the face of structural challenges, Black women are pursuing political office in unprecedented numbers, and having electoral success in many instances. In 2022, a record number of women ran for congressional and state elective executive offices. Moreover, a record number of Black women serve in congressional, state elective executive, and state legislative offices due to that election (Dittmar 2023). Race and gender scholars have explored obstacles Black women candidates face when running for office, including their own political ambition, voter biases, informal gatekeepers, and voter suppression efforts which negatively impact nonwhite voters. But extant scholarship offers few explanations about the ways in which Black women’s political participation increase their electability. Furthermore, recent research on Black women political elites has shed light on what motivates their behavior and decision making. In this dissertation, I seek to further our understanding of the experiences of Black women political elites. Specifically, I seek to understand the experiences of Black women candidates and latent candidates and ways in which they can win voter support. I focus on one intervention which I believe helps them achieve this – candidate training program participation. I rely upon survey experiments, observational data from a large public opinion dataset, a conjoint experiment, and semi-structured interviews to elucidate challenges Black women face when running for office and ways in which they meet those challenges like making the strategic choice to participate in efforts such as candidate trainings. The results further suggest candidate training program participation as a candidate characteristic increases the likelihood voters will choose to support Black women and white women candidates. Generally, findings show voters prefer candidates with candidate training than candidates without candidate training. These findings highlight ways in which Black women can use participatory efforts like candidate training to build their network, garner more support from voters, and increase their electability.
Read
