Many individuals, but most especially those on the liberal side of the aisle, Setzler writes,

will admit their hostility toward women leaders only when they do not realize that they are doing so or when their concerns can be communicated in a way that does not run counter to social norms.

The traditional approach, which asks “respondents whether men, women, or both equally make better political leaders” fails to capture this latent sexism, in Setzler’s view. Instead, Setzler tested asking a similar question carefully in “a face-saving frame that reminds respondents that relatively few women hold high-level elected office.” The goal is to “reduce social desirability effects and lead to more accurate responses, especially for respondents who are unusually disinclined to admit bias openly.”

Setzler said his approach “permits individuals to acknowledge their bias without directly stating that they prefer male leaders or that they ‘agree’ that men are better.” It does so by asking “whether a person thinks that one of the ‘reasons’ that women are underrepresented in government is because ‘generally speaking, males make better leaders’. ”

In another key step, “the alternative measure is presented as one item in a block of questions exploring potential causes of female underrepresentation, thus cognitively masking its purpose”

When asked the conventional question directly, Setzler found, “minority respondents are slightly less likely than whites to say that male political leaders are superior when responding, but they are 10 points more likely than whites to exhibit pro-male bias on the masked measure.” In the case of partisanship, “Republicans are nearly three times as likely as Democrats (34 percent versus 13 percent) to admit to having a pro-male bias when responding to the conventional item.” But, he continued, “Democrats are nearly indistinguishable from Republicans in their answers to the masked question”:

While previous research indicates that Democrats are disproportionately supportive of female politicians, the findings here show that Democrats are three times more likely to express pro-male bias when they are responding to a modestly masked measure of the same prejudice.

What can be inferred from voters who have abandoned not only Bernie Sanders but Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, Kirsten Gillibrand and Kamala Harris? Primarily that voters, including Democrats, are not as liberal as some polls suggest and as many on the left assert. The share of Democrats who identify as liberal or very liberal has grown steadily from 27 percent in 2000 to 47 percent in 2019, according to Pew, but self-identified moderates and conservatives stood at 49 percent in 2019

After looking at polling conducted throughout 2019, Lydia Saad, a senior editor at Gallup, found, that

The ideological balance of the country remained center-right, with 37 percent of Americans, on average, identifying as conservative during the year, 35 percent as moderate and 24 percent as liberal.

Since the Super Tuesday contests last week and similar primary results this week, the outcomes suggest that Democratic voters are coming to terms with that assessment by pushing Joe Biden, the de facto candidate of moderation, into the lead spot.

Republicans remained committed to profiting from sexism and racism.

Schaffner, MacWilliams and Nteta put the case well:

There is reason to think that Trump’s strategy of using explicitly racist and sexist appeals to win over white voters may be followed by candidates in future elections,” they write. “There is no longer a price to be paid by politicians who make such explicit appeals. Explicit racist and sexist appeals appeared to cost Trump some votes from more educated whites, but it may have won him even more support among whites with less education.

Republicans, they argue,

have two choices — moderate their appeals in order to restore their advantage among more educated white voters (even if it costs them some votes among less educated whites) or repeat the Trump strategy to maximize their support among less educated whites (even at the expense of winning large margins among college‐educated whites). As the norms governing political rhetoric appear to have largely been shattered in 2016, the latter strategy is at least as plausible as the former, and that may have significant consequences for the stability of American democracy.

There isn’t much doubt which strategy Trump will choose.

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