Many more US voters support gay candidates, but only if they look and act ‘straight,’ study finds

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Many more US voters support gay candidates, but only if they look and act 'straight,' study finds

A first-of-its-kind study separates sexuality and gender expression to explore voter attitudes

EVANSTON, Ill.- The period between 2018 and 2022, sometimes referred to as "the rainbow wave," featured an unprecedented increase in LGBTQ candidates elected to office. Pete Buttigieg's rise (from mayor of South Bend, Indiana, to U.S. secretary of transportation with a 2020 bid for president in between) sparked a national dialogue about whether gay candidates no longer faced an electoral penalty at the ballot box.

A new study from Northwestern University sought to answer whether Americans have moved past prejudices against gay people, and what kind of gay candidates face little to no electoral penalty. The research reveals American voters are more accepting of gay candidates than at any point in our history, but acceptance is conditional and varies by political party.

The paper, "The Right Kind of (Gay) Man? Sexuality, Gender Presentation and Heteronormative Constraints on Electability," recently published in the Journal of Politics. The lead author Martin Naunov, an assistant professor of political science and a faculty associate at the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern, found strikingly different implications for being gay in American politics versus acting and looking gay. The study found Republican voters continue to penalize candidates for being gay and for being even slightly gender nonconforming. Among Democratic and young voters, the anti-gay penalty has partly vanished and partly shifted to penalizing candidates who look or sound slightly gender nonconforming.

"On the left, the bias against gay candidates has moved from 'don't be gay' to 'don't look or sound gay,'" Naunov said. "Voters across the political spectrum, including those who think of themselves as allies, still show bias against candidates who look or sound even slightly gender nonconforming - a key cultural marker of gayness. This has real consequences for who gets elected and represented in public life."

The study is the first to introduce gender presentation - the masculinity or femininity of a candidate's appearance - into the debate over electability, and separate sexuality and gender presentation as two related but distinct biases that earlier political science studies have conflated.

The study also breaks new ground as the first political science experiment to examine both between-group and within-group discrimination. The existing literature has studied whether voters reject a group outright (gay vs. straight, Black vs. white, immigrant vs. native), overlooking a second, more insidious bias: those who embody visible markers of their minority identity.

Individuals with markers of a minority identity such as a gay candidate with a lisp, an immigrant job applicant with an accent or a Black defendant who speaks African American Vernacular English can face penalties even from people who reject anti-gay, anti-immigrant or anti-Black bias at the entire group level.

"In the real world, bias rarely operates on group identities alone. It operates on the physical markers that make identity distinctive and visible," Naunov said. "Bias often targets a substantial subset of the minority group who may face penalties even from people who reject anti-gay bias at the group level."

How the study was done

In two survey experiments sent to nearly 2,600 participants (a survey of 1,971 U.S. adults and a survey of 616 university students), participants were asked to evaluate hypothetical congressional primary candidates from their own party, and rate how likely they would be to vote for each. Each candidate profile included a headshot and a short audio campaign message.

Naunov independently manipulated the candidate's sexuality, signaled with gendered partner cues like "husband" or "wife" and gender presentation (using software to subtly feminize candidate's facial features or raise their vocal pitch). To ensure the gender presentation manipulations were within the distribution range of actual candidates, the manipulated profiles were checked against a sample of 157 actual male-presenting gay candidates endorsed by the Victory Fund (the largest LGBTQ political PAC).

Key findings

(By political party)

• Among Republicans, being gay reduced a candidate's probability of support by roughly 22 percentage points.
• Among Democrats, being gay did not lead to electoral penalty, and even slightly increased the level of support.

(All voters)

• Identifying as gay dropped a candidate's probability of support by seven percentage points nationally.
• A gender nonconforming appearance dropped the probability of support of a gay candidate by another seven percentage points.
• Both Democrats and Republicans penalize gender nonconformity at the same rate (about seven percentage points).
• The gender nonconformity penalty applies to both gay and straight men. A straight man who looks or sounds gender nonconforming also pays an electoral cost.

"What surprised me most was that Democrats punished gender nonconformity at roughly the same rate as Republicans," Naunov said.

Implications for the public and Pride Month

Once banned from holding federal jobs, today, openly gay candidates win governorships, run presidential campaigns and are no longer penalized for being gay by a substantial share of American voters.

The study provides empirical data on the electability of LGBTQ candidates and shows the bias hasn't disappeared as much as shifted.

"We used to refuse to elect gay people. Now we elect them, but so long as they conform to a very particular version of masculinity," Naunov said.

The study also reveals existing limits on the electability of heterosexual candidates.

"The study shows straight men who deviate even slightly from norms of masculinity get punished electorally too," Naunov said. "Recognizing this matters, because it points to something that often gets lost in conversations about LGBTQ rights: Traditional beliefs about how a person should look, sound and move in the world may privilege heterosexuality, but they also diminish the freedom and authenticity of everyone, including straight people."