The 2022 midterm elections delivered the most diverse slate of elected officials in the history of the nation, including breakthroughs by women and what’s being called a “rainbow wave” — a winning slate of lesbian, gay and bisexual candidates across the country. Republican Sarah Sanders became the first woman elected governor of Arkansas. Democrat Maura Healey rang in three firsts: first woman elected governor of Massachusetts; with her running mate, the state’s first all-female governor/lieutenant governor pair; and the nation’s first openly lesbian elected governor, soon followed by Oregon’s Tina Kotek.
In her acceptance speech, Healey argued her election showed that barriers were now down for women and lesbian, gay and bisexual candidates, declaring, “To every little girl and every young LGBTQ person out there, I hope tonight shows you that you can be whatever, whoever you want to be.”
Healey’s optimism contrasts with decades of research finding that voters who hold strong sexist or antigay attitudes are more likely to oppose women and lesbian, gay and bisexual candidates, respectively.
Is Healey right? Have attitudes changed?
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How we did our research
To find out, we used Healey’s historic candidacy to study whether either sexism or antigay attitudes influenced voters in Massachusetts, one of the nation’s most liberal states — but which has lagged behind others in electing women to statewide office.
We ran a University of Massachusetts Amherst/WCVB poll of 700 Massachusetts registered voters, fielded online by YouGov from Oct. 20 to 26. We asked respondents, “If the 2022 election for governor were held today, which one of the following candidates would you support?” The options were Maura Healey (Democrat), Geoff Diehl (Republican), Kevin Reed (Libertarian), Other, and Don’t Know.
We also asked respondents whether they agreed with three statements that capture what political scientists call “hostile sexist” attitudes toward women. For example, one item in the index asks respondents whether they agree or disagree with the statement “women seek to gain power by getting control over men,” ranking their agreement on a scale from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree.” To measure antigay attitudes, we asked respondents to indicate “on a scale from 0 (coldest) to 100 (warmest) how do you feel about lesbian, gay, and bisexual people?”
Sexism mattered in Healey’s election
Among those with the most sexist views, 30 percent supported Healey and 65 percent reported that they supported the Republican candidate, Geoff Diehl. Among those with the least sexist views, 95 percent supported Healey and 4 percent supported Diehl. Meanwhile, attitudes toward lesbian, gay and bisexual people are also associated with Massachusetts voters’ choices in 2022. Those with the most antigay views preferred Diehl over Healey by a 74-22 margin, while those with the least antigay attitudes backed Healey over Diehl by a margin of 82 to 12.
However, these findings do not account for other important factors, such as partisan affiliation, ideology, gender, race, income, education or beliefs about the Massachusetts economy, which also influence voters’ candidate choices. When we ran a statistical model that included these factors as controls, we found that while sexism predicted Massachusetts voters’ decisions, attitudes toward lesbian, gay and bisexual people did not.
Tina Kotek was elected governor of Oregon thanks to these 3 factors
Antigay attitudes did not influence Healey’s election. We double-checked.
The finding that antigay attitudes were not influencing Massachusetts voters surprised us. We wondered whether they resulted from our using what’s called a “feeling thermometer” to measure antigay attitudes; we speculated that it might be overly blunt and subject to social desirability bias, or the desire to give the socially approved answer. To further investigate, in the same survey, we used a technique known as a list experiment.
We randomly divided our sample into two groups. We asked each group to read a list of candidate qualities. We then asked both groups, “Please tell us HOW MANY of these qualities you believe would prevent you from voting for a candidate in the 2022 election for governor. We do not want to know which qualities would prevent you from supporting a candidate, just HOW MANY.” [Emphases in original.]
We gave the control group four qualities to choose from: the candidate was born outside of the state; the candidate has a criminal record; the candidate is liberal; and the candidate is conservative. We gave the other group one more option to select: the candidate is gay or lesbian. We focused on the options “gay or lesbian” as Healey publicly identifies as a lesbian.
Because both groups were asked only to report how many qualities would get them to oppose the candidates and not which ones, respondents in the second group could feel they were making their choices without revealing their antigay beliefs. As a result, if the second group chose more qualities as deal-breakers than the control group, we would know that some of them wouldn’t choose someone who was gay or lesbian.
But there was no statistical difference between the average number of dealbreaker qualities cited by the control group and the experimental group. The share of respondents for whom a candidate’s sexual orientation mattered is vanishingly small, at least in Massachusetts.
Why?
Recent research finds that lesbian candidates fare better than gay male candidates and that lesbian, gay and bisexual candidates with previous government experience enjoy greater electoral support than lesbian, gay and bisexual candidates without prior governmental experience. Healey, of course, is lesbian rather than a gay man and was a highly popular two-term state attorney general — a position she ran for in 2014 after having served in the attorney general’s office for seven years. These factors have decreased the influence of antigay attitudes both in this election and among our respondents, who of course knew that Healey was the most prominent candidate on the state ballot.
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Sexism remains, while attitudes toward lesbian and gay people change
Nevertheless, our findings suggest remarkable social change, at least in Massachusetts.
People of the same sex didn’t win the right to marry in the state until 2004 — although, of course, Massachusetts was the first state in the country that legally recognized and performed such marriages. Eighteen years later, voters in Massachusetts don’t appear to consider sexual orientation when voting. Arguably, this attitude also lies behind Massachusetts’ trend toward becoming strongly pro-LGBTQ in its politics and policymaking.
Some voters still penalize women, even after five decades of dramatic economic and social gains. But our results suggest that at least some of Healey’s optimism is warranted: Women and lesbian, gay, and bisexual candidates do face fewer barriers than in the past.
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Tatishe Nteta is provost professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and director of the UMass Poll.
Adam Eichen is a PhD student in political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and a research fellow for the UMass Poll.
Maddi Hertz is an academic adviser and instructional technology and design manager in the data analytics and computational social science program at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and a research fellow for the UMass Poll.
Ray La Raja is a professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and co-director of the UMass Poll.
Jesse Rhodes is a professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and co-director of the UMass Poll.
Alexander Theodoridis is an associate professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and co-director of the UMass Poll.