54 1 Based on 52,968 observations, Figure 4 shows that voters assess Asian candidates slightly more positively than white candidates. The overall effect is positive (0.76 percentage points) and statistically significant. Indeed, some authors stress the relative advantages Asian citizens and candidates have in the US, leading to Asian Americans receiving “positive racial stereotyping” (Visalvanich, 2017) or being seen as an “acceptable” group (Kevins, 2019: 7). Our results echo these findings, though the effect is substantively small. Given the effect sizes for how the general population assesses racial/ethnic minority candidates, we conclude that the underrepresentation of racial/ethnic minority citizens in politics is not caused by voters first impressions of racial/ethnic minority candidates, but that the cause lies elsewhere. Since Norris and Lovenduski (1993) classic work, scholars tend to refer to demand and supply-side explanations for underrepresentation of minority groups (Azabar et al., 2020; Holman and Schneider, 2018). Our meta-analysis focusses on demand-side explanations, do voters prefer certain candidates? There is no evidence that the general population prefers candidates with majority over minority races/ethnicities, we point towards the supply-side to explain the underrepresentation of racial/ethnic minority candidates in politics. Supply-side explanations refer to the availability and selection of candidates, not to voter preferences, the demand-side. Indeed, many party selectors lament how hard it is to find suitable candidates who can bring more racial/ethnic diversity to their political party, although the rates at which minority and majority citizens are interested in running for office are not different (Dancygier et al., 2021). Party selectors’ ideas about how white voters might react to racial/ethnic minority candidates are more likely to cause for underrepresentation, because they fear that voters have more doubts about minority candidates than their white counterparts (Dancygier et al., 2021; Doherty et al., 2019). In the gender and politics literature, this is referred to as “strategic discriminations”, where people reproduce prejudice because they overestimate other people’s prejudice (Bateson, 2020).
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