Do religious voters discriminate against women gubernatorial candidates? Mark Setzler and Alixandra B. Yanus Department of Political Science, High Point University, High Point, NC, USA ABSTRACT Scholars report that areas with higher concentrations of religious voters elect relatively few women to executive office. These studies, however, cannot explain whether the observed patterns are a direct result of religious individuals’ vote choices. Our study explores this question using Cooperative Congressional Election Studies data from all mixed-gender gubernatorial elections in the 2008 through 2016 general election cycles. We conclude that religious voters, regardless of religious tradition or gender, are not significant barriers to electing women to state executive office. More specifically, religious individuals are disproportionately supportive of Republican women and opposed to Democratic women, even when controlling for the ideological distance between the individual’s partisanship and that of the candidate. ARTICLE HISTORY Received 9 June 2016 Accepted 20 June 2017 KEYWORDS Women and gender; elections; religions; state politics Macro-level research has demonstrated that state- and district-level differences in socio- cultural climates correspond to the rates at which women are elected to political office. This finding is true for state legislatures, statewide executive offices, and both houses of the US Congress (e.g., Merolla, Schroedel, and Waller 2009; Oxley and Fox 2004; Windett 2011). Many of these studies conclude that female politicians face unusually serious obstacles in highly religious areas because these communities are less supportive of female political leaders. Specifically, scholars claim that electorates in more traditiona- listic regions prefer male politicians because a large share of their voters holds religiously derived beliefs questioning the desirability of female leadership (Merolla, Schroedel, and Holman 2007; Merolla, Schroedel, and Waller 2009; Setzler 2016; Vandenbosch 1996). While such studies make a strong initial case for the proposition that religiosity is somehow linked to voter support for women, macro-level analyses cannot fully test this causal mechanism. Examining the motivation of voters, by definition, requires individ- ual-level data that facilitates examination of the extent to which individuals’ religiosity and their religious backgrounds determine their support or rejection of women candidates. Do more religious voters, or at least individuals belonging to some religious traditions, discriminate against women candidates for executive positions? The present analysis explores this question by focusing on how voters’ frequency of attending religious services and their particular religious denomination affect their vote choice in gubernatorial elec- tions. We also analyze the extent to which the direct and indirect influence of religious © 2017 Western Political Science Association CONTACT Alixandra B. Yanus ayanus@highpoint.edu POLITICS, GROUPS, AND IDENTITIES, 2017 https://doi.org/10.1080/21565503.2017.1358644 Downloaded by [97.75.155.13] at 12:23 02 September 2017