Ballot Box Battles: Sex, Ethnicity and the Electoral Performance of UK Candidates

The UK Parliament has become increasingly diverse in recent years. Yet it is far from being descriptively representative of the population. We investigate how minority candidates fare at the polls. Do women and ethnic minority candidates (still) get a lower vote share than their counterparts? Are there compound effects for intersectional minority candidates? Our research makes three contributions to the growing literature on the electoral fortunes of minority candidates. First, it focuses on candidate sex, ethnicity and the combination thereof. Second, it looks at how opponent sex and ethnicity impact a candidate’s vote share. Third, building on findings of a decreasing gender gap in vote shares, we ask how the impact of sex and ethnicity on candidate vote share changes over time. We answer these questions with candidate-level data covering the 2010 to 2019 UK elections. Our findings suggest that there is no gap in the electoral success of male and female candidates. Ethnic minority candidates do worse, but this effect is driven by ethnic minority male candidates from non-incumbent parties. Female ethnic minority candidates receive a similar vote share to white candidates and both male and female candidates from non-incumbent parties do better if they run against ethnic minority opponent(s). Finally, any observed differences seem to be disappearing with time.