UC Riverside

The purpose of this dissertation is to increase our understanding of the conditions under which Americans—and particularly men and women—vote for women candidates in primary and nonpartisan elections. I theorize that a cause for personal identification with feminism among men and women is primarily one or some combination of what I call “empathetic catalysts” which all relate to real-world, lived experiences. I argue here that there are certain intense empathy inducing events (empathetic catalysts) like formal learning, experiencing certain forms of discrimination, and having a daughter that cause a shift in identity and subsequently, increase the likelihood of voting for a woman running for political office. I use data from the American National Election Study (ANES) 2016 and 2020, the Ask Every Student (AES) survey, the Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CES) 2020, the Party at the Mailbox Study (PATM) 2020, a 2019 study run by the UCR Politics & Gender Lab, as well as original data collected via MTurk to test the relationships between these catalysts, empathy, feminist identification, and voting for women running for office. I find that these catalysts are positively related to levels of feminism and support for women candidates. However, the strength of these relationships vary by gender.