Terrorist threat decreases citizens’ relative preferences for women candidates: Insights from a Danish conjoint experiment

Abstract

For several decades, democracies across the Globe have faced the persistent threat from terrorist attacks. A possible consequence of terrorist threat is that citizens come to find men candidates relatively more appealing compared to women candidates. However, recent meta-analyses reveal that citizens generally prefer women over men candidates when terrorist threat is absent. Here, we report the results from a pre-registered conjoint experiment testing whether the terrorist risk assessment from the official Danish intelligence authority (Politiets Efterretningstjeneste, PET) affects candidate gender preferences among a sample of 1,034 representative Danes. Results reveal an average marginal component effect of 8.6 percentage points favoring women candidates in the absence of terrorist threat. However, when the risk of terrorism against Denmark is made salient, this effect is significantly reduced to 5.3 percentage points. Follow-up analyses reveal that left-wing respondents change their candidate gender preferences most when terrorist threat becomes salient. Implications for challenges to political representation are discussed.