Candidates’ spouses have received significant attention in the U.S. presidential election scheduled for next week. There are even polls measuring public favorability of spouses — not just for the 2016 race, but going back to at least 1988.
[interstitial_link url=”https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/08/09/melania-trump-is-the-least-favorably-viewed-presidential-spouse-since-hillary-clinton/”]Melania Trump is the least favorably viewed presidential candidate spouse — since Hillary Clinton[/interstitial_link]
These spouse favorability polls don’t really seem to matter, though. Having a popular spouse doesn’t guarantee an election win, and having an unpopular spouse doesn’t tank your bid for office.
But there are ways in which your spouse can help you get elected.
In a recently published article, “The Spousal Bump: Do Cross-Ethnic Marriages Increase Political Support in Multiethnic Democracies?,” Claire Adida, Nathan Combes, Adeline Lo and Alex Verink, political scientists at the University of California at San Diego, examined whether presidential candidates could win the support of voters who have the same ethnicity as candidates’ spouses.
Adida and colleagues studied the “spousal bump” by fielding an experiment in Benin and through analysis of related trends in other African countries using Afrobarometer data.
The Benin experiment: How the first lady’s ethnicity increased support for her husband
Benin’s president at the time of the experiment, Boni Yayi, is a Yoruba (more specifically, a Nago) on his father’s side but is also of Bariba descent from his mother’s side. Adida shows (in another, related experiment) how Yayi could either cue voters about his ethnic heritage from his mother’s group to solicit support from other Bariba or cue voters about his father’s ethnicity to solicit support from other Yoruba.
While these two groups make up a significant portion of Benin’s electorate — geographically covering much of the country’s north and central regions — the largest ethnic group in Benin is the Fon. (In the 2014 Afrobarometer survey, 41 percent of Beninese interviewed reported to be Fon.)
Chantal Yayi, who was then the first lady of Benin, is shown with Laura Bush, then the American first lady, in 2008. (Eric Draper/White House)
Boni Yayi’s wife, Chantal Yayi, is Fon. Adida and her colleagues used this cross-ethnic marriage to study whether a candidate could use his spouse’s identity to draw support from his spouse’s ethnic group. More concretely, the researchers investigated whether Fon voters would support the Yoruba-Bariba candidate when reminded that he was married to a Fon.
The experiment Adida and her colleagues designed was subtle. Before asking study participants about their support for Boni Yayi, interviewers read a brief prompt about the president. In a third of the surveys, there was no mention of Yayi’s wife (this was the “control” condition in the experiment); in another third of the surveys, Chantal Yayi was mentioned by name but not ethnicity; and in the final third of surveys, Chantal was mentioned by name and ethnicity.
Adida and her colleagues found that mentioning Yayi’s ethnicity significantly increased support for her husband among voters from her ethnic group. While only 19 percent of Fon supported Boni Yayi in the control condition (where there was no mention of Chantal Yayi or her ethnicity), 41 percent of the Fon who were reminded of Boni Yayi’s Fon wife supported him.
Beyond Benin: Looking at patterns in Afrobarometer data matched to new presidential spouse data
Going beyond Benin, Adida and her colleagues created a new data set on the ethnicity of leader’s spouses to be matched to the 18 African countries included in Rounds 3 and 4 of Afrobarometer.
Examining Afrobarometer data for similar trends sets a much higher bar for the researchers’ test. Unlike in the Benin experiment, Afrobarometer respondents are not reminded about the ethnic group of their president’s spouse before being asked whether they support the president.
Still, Adida and her colleagues found that when a leader marries across ethnic lines, co-ethnics of the leader’s spouse are more supportive of the leader than citizens who shared neither the leader’s nor the spouse’s ethnicity. These findings from Afrobarometer suggest cross-ethnic spouses are a potential resource for drawing more support in a multiethnic setting.
While Adida and her colleagues focused their analysis on African countries, they conclude their study by pointing out the importance of spouse effects more broadly — reminding readers of the political marriages of the Roman Empire. So I have to ask: Is anyone studying attitudes toward the U.S. candidates among Slovenian Americans?
This post is part of our Fall Friday Afrobarometer series, which highlights findings from the Pan-African, nonpartisan research network that conducts public-attitude surveys on democracy, governance, economic conditions and related issues in more than 35 countries in Africa. Read more in the series:
- Africa’s largest public-opinion survey is under threat, but here’s what you can do about it
- What can public opinion surveys tell us about what is going on in Gabon?
- A year ago, most Zimbabweans trusted Mugabe. Here’s why so many are now protesting in the streets.
- How democratic is Botswana after 50 years of independence?
- This two-minute video sums up African public opinion
- Malawians are missing their president. The last time that happened, the president was dead.
- Liberia has an important transition of power on the horizon. Here’s a preview.
- Here’s what Africans think about China’s influence in their countries