Heather L Ondercin
Biographic Data
| ID | 232856 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Heather L Ondercin |
| GIVEN NAMES | Heather L |
| FAMILY NAME | Ondercin |
| SIGNATURE | ONDERCIN H L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Appalachian State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9403-7805 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 245 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
Gender Candidate Evaluations and Campaign Donations
We consider how gendered evaluations of candidates shape potential donors’ support of hypothetical candidates for the state legislature. Using an experimental design, we test two pathways by which candidate gender can influence the support and donations received by candidates. Potential Democratic donors consistently evaluate women more positively than men. These positive evaluations translate into a slight fundraising advantage for women. There …
Location, Location, Location: How Electoral Opportunities Shape Women's Emergence as Candidates
Despite evidence that women win when they run for office, the number of women in the US House of Representatives has not increased substantially. I argue that women win when they run because women engage in strategic behavior by emerging in locations where they are most likely to win. While strategic behavior is a necessary condition for increasing women's representation in office, it is not a sufficient condition. Analyzing regularly scheduled e…
Guns, Butter, and Growth: The Consequences of Military Spending Reconsidered
How does increasing military spending affect social spending and economic growth? We argue leaders vary in their preferences over how to pay for military spending and failing to account for interdependence among methods of government finance, government spending, and economic performance limits scholars’ ability to identify the consequences of military spending. We use vector autoregressive models to estimate the relationships among military spen…
You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling: How Gender Shapes Affective Polarization
We examine variation in levels of affective polarization for men and women. Using the 1980 to 2016 American National Election Studies, we find that women are more affectively polarized than men. The effect of sex partially works indirectly through political identities and issue positions. Moreover, sex acts as a moderator, with political identities and issues positions have different effects on men’s and women’s level of affective polarization. T…
Marching to the Ballot Box: Sex and Voting in the 2020 Election Cycle
With the 2020 election marking the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, our attention has been keenly focused on women voters. Media coverage of women voters portrayed them as swing voters and focused on a small subgroup of women (white, married, mothers). I argue that women’s and men’s voting behavior in 2020 was highly similar to past elections and does not support the claims that women or a subgroup of women are swing v…
Introduction to Women's Political Involvement in the 100 Years since the Nineteenth Amendment
August 19, 2020, marks the centennial of ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, which guaranteed that the right to vote could not be denied on the basis of sex. The Nineteenth Amendment did not radically transform women’s political activism; rather, it was a product of women’s political activism. Women won the franchise in a 72-year battle fought at both the state and national levels. By the time the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified, women ha…
Bargain Shopping: How Candidate Sex Lowers the Cost of Voting
Previous research shows that candidate sex serves as a heuristic that lessens the informational burden of political decision making. Building upon this research, we investigate the heuristic effects of candidate sex on the decision to turnout to vote in an election. We posit that by providing ideological and nonideological information about the candidates, candidate sex serves as an informational shortcut that reduces the costs associated with vo…
Is it a Chasm? Is it a Canyon? No, it is the Gender Gap
Many speculated that we would observe a gender gap in vote choice of historic proportions in the 2018 midterm elections. However, the 2018 gender gap was similar to gender gaps in previous elections. I argue that the gender gap is not about a specific candidate or election but is driven by gender differences in partisan attachments. Variation in the gender gap in Senate and gubernatorial elections highlight that the gender gap does not advantage …
Who Is Responsible for the Gender Gap? The Dynamics of Men’s and Women’s Democratic Macropartisanship, 1950–2012
I argue the gender gap is a function of men and women changing their partisanship as they seek the best representation of their gendered social identity from the political parties. Specifically, shifts in the parties due to party realignments and shifts in the composition of parties’ congressional delegations have provided individuals with a clearer signal on which to base their partisan attachments. Men and women have responded differently to th…
Conditional Motivated Reasoning: How the Local Economy Moderates Partisan Motivations in Economic Perceptions
Using motivated reasoning, voters rely on partisanship as a heuristic for evaluating the economy in belief-preserving ways. Yet recent findings show that these motivations may be restricted by a range of contextual factors. We argue that partisan motivations in economic perceptions are moderated by the local economic context. As conditions worsen, a negative information environment leads in-partisans to political ambivalence that reduces confiden…
Explaining the Dynamics between the Women's Movement and the Conservative Movement in the United States
We examine the causes of movement and countermovement mobilization, focusing specifically on the effect that the national movements have on each other by responding directly to mobilization and indirectly through their policy successes. We discuss the mechanisms by which national movements respond to each other, and we examine the influence of political parties and social, political, and economic changes for women. We analyze these relationships …
Public Opinion as a Movement Outcome: The Case of the U.S. Women's Movement
We demonstrate that an important outcome of social movements is public opinion change, particularly in the case of the U.S. women's movement. We argue that contentious events associated with the women's movement provide informational cues that prime the public. This process then leads to changes in attitudes regarding gender. We use quarterly time series data on contentious events of the U.S. women's movement ranging from 1960 to 1992 and public …
Does Sex Encourage Commitment? The Impact of Candidate Choices on the Time-to-Decision
What Scarlett O'Hara Thinks: Political Attitudes of Southern Women
Political learning during the 2000 U.S. presidential election: The impact of the campaign on the gender gap in political knowledge
Gender Jeopardy: What is the Impact of Gender Differences in Political Knowledge on Political Participation
Objective. We explore whether observed sex‐based differences in political knowledge have an impact on men's and women's participation in six different political activities. Methods. Utilizing ANES data from the five presidential elections between 1984 and 2000, we employ logistic regression to estimate the likelihood of voting, influencing a vote, attending a political meeting, working on a political campaign, wearing a political button, and maki…
Comparing Predictors of Women's Congressional Election Success: Candidates, Primaries, and the General Election
Examining all Congressional races from 1992 through 2000, we explore why, over time, some districts are more likely to have women candidates and to elect women than are others. We focus on the obvious, but rarely explored, fact that women's election success is a product of three key stages of the election process: women running, women's successes in the primaries, and finally, women's general election successes. We find that different factors pre…
Context Matters: The Influence of State and Campaign Factors on the Gender Gap in Senate Elections, 1988–2000
Since the 1980s, we have witnessed how the gender gap grows and shrinks in various elections; we address how the context in which the election takes place influences the size of the divide. Studying the gender gap in Senate elections allows us to look at multiple elections across time and space to determine when significant electoral gender gaps arise and when they do not. This contrasts with more traditional approaches that focus either on a sin…
Who Is Responsible for the Gender Gap? The Dynamics of Men’s and Women’s Democratic Macropartisanship, 1950–2012
I argue the gender gap is a function of men and women changing their partisanship as they seek the best representation of their gendered social identity from the political parties. Specifically, shifts in the parties due to party realignments and shifts in the composition of parties’ congressional delegations have provided individuals with a clearer signal on which to base their partisan attachments. Men and women have responded differently to th…
Comparing Predictors of Women's Congressional Election Success: Candidates, Primaries, and the General Election
Examining all Congressional races from 1992 through 2000, we explore why, over time, some districts are more likely to have women candidates and to elect women than are others. We focus on the obvious, but rarely explored, fact that women's election success is a product of three key stages of the election process: women running, women's successes in the primaries, and finally, women's general election successes. We find that different factors pre…
Public Opinion as a Movement Outcome: The Case of the U.S. Women's Movement
We demonstrate that an important outcome of social movements is public opinion change, particularly in the case of the U.S. women's movement. We argue that contentious events associated with the women's movement provide informational cues that prime the public. This process then leads to changes in attitudes regarding gender. We use quarterly time series data on contentious events of the U.S. women's movement ranging from 1960 to 1992 and public …
Gender Jeopardy: What is the Impact of Gender Differences in Political Knowledge on Political Participation
Objective. We explore whether observed sex‐based differences in political knowledge have an impact on men's and women's participation in six different political activities. Methods. Utilizing ANES data from the five presidential elections between 1984 and 2000, we employ logistic regression to estimate the likelihood of voting, influencing a vote, attending a political meeting, working on a political campaign, wearing a political button, and maki…
Does Sex Encourage Commitment? The Impact of Candidate Choices on the Time-to-Decision
Conditional Motivated Reasoning: How the Local Economy Moderates Partisan Motivations in Economic Perceptions
Using motivated reasoning, voters rely on partisanship as a heuristic for evaluating the economy in belief-preserving ways. Yet recent findings show that these motivations may be restricted by a range of contextual factors. We argue that partisan motivations in economic perceptions are moderated by the local economic context. As conditions worsen, a negative information environment leads in-partisans to political ambivalence that reduces confiden…
Location, Location, Location: How Electoral Opportunities Shape Women's Emergence as Candidates
Despite evidence that women win when they run for office, the number of women in the US House of Representatives has not increased substantially. I argue that women win when they run because women engage in strategic behavior by emerging in locations where they are most likely to win. While strategic behavior is a necessary condition for increasing women's representation in office, it is not a sufficient condition. Analyzing regularly scheduled e…
You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling: How Gender Shapes Affective Polarization
We examine variation in levels of affective polarization for men and women. Using the 1980 to 2016 American National Election Studies, we find that women are more affectively polarized than men. The effect of sex partially works indirectly through political identities and issue positions. Moreover, sex acts as a moderator, with political identities and issues positions have different effects on men’s and women’s level of affective polarization. T…
Bargain Shopping: How Candidate Sex Lowers the Cost of Voting
Previous research shows that candidate sex serves as a heuristic that lessens the informational burden of political decision making. Building upon this research, we investigate the heuristic effects of candidate sex on the decision to turnout to vote in an election. We posit that by providing ideological and nonideological information about the candidates, candidate sex serves as an informational shortcut that reduces the costs associated with vo…
Context Matters: The Influence of State and Campaign Factors on the Gender Gap in Senate Elections, 1988–2000
Since the 1980s, we have witnessed how the gender gap grows and shrinks in various elections; we address how the context in which the election takes place influences the size of the divide. Studying the gender gap in Senate elections allows us to look at multiple elections across time and space to determine when significant electoral gender gaps arise and when they do not. This contrasts with more traditional approaches that focus either on a sin…
Guns, Butter, and Growth: The Consequences of Military Spending Reconsidered
How does increasing military spending affect social spending and economic growth? We argue leaders vary in their preferences over how to pay for military spending and failing to account for interdependence among methods of government finance, government spending, and economic performance limits scholars’ ability to identify the consequences of military spending. We use vector autoregressive models to estimate the relationships among military spen…
Political learning during the 2000 U.S. presidential election: The impact of the campaign on the gender gap in political knowledge
Is it a Chasm? Is it a Canyon? No, it is the Gender Gap
Many speculated that we would observe a gender gap in vote choice of historic proportions in the 2018 midterm elections. However, the 2018 gender gap was similar to gender gaps in previous elections. I argue that the gender gap is not about a specific candidate or election but is driven by gender differences in partisan attachments. Variation in the gender gap in Senate and gubernatorial elections highlight that the gender gap does not advantage …
What Scarlett O'Hara Thinks: Political Attitudes of Southern Women
Gender Candidate Evaluations and Campaign Donations
We consider how gendered evaluations of candidates shape potential donors’ support of hypothetical candidates for the state legislature. Using an experimental design, we test two pathways by which candidate gender can influence the support and donations received by candidates. Potential Democratic donors consistently evaluate women more positively than men. These positive evaluations translate into a slight fundraising advantage for women. There …
Marching to the Ballot Box: Sex and Voting in the 2020 Election Cycle
With the 2020 election marking the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, our attention has been keenly focused on women voters. Media coverage of women voters portrayed them as swing voters and focused on a small subgroup of women (white, married, mothers). I argue that women’s and men’s voting behavior in 2020 was highly similar to past elections and does not support the claims that women or a subgroup of women are swing v…
Context Matters: The Influence of State and Campaign Factors on the Gender Gap in Senate Elections, 1988–2000
Since the 1980s, we have witnessed how the gender gap grows and shrinks in various elections; we address how the context in which the election takes place influences the size of the divide. Studying the gender gap in Senate elections allows us to look at multiple elections across time and space to determine when significant electoral gender gaps arise and when they do not. This contrasts with more traditional approaches that focus either on a sin…
Comparing Predictors of Women's Congressional Election Success: Candidates, Primaries, and the General Election
Examining all Congressional races from 1992 through 2000, we explore why, over time, some districts are more likely to have women candidates and to elect women than are others. We focus on the obvious, but rarely explored, fact that women's election success is a product of three key stages of the election process: women running, women's successes in the primaries, and finally, women's general election successes. We find that different factors pre…
Political learning during the 2000 U.S. presidential election: The impact of the campaign on the gender gap in political knowledge
Gender Jeopardy: What is the Impact of Gender Differences in Political Knowledge on Political Participation
Objective. We explore whether observed sex‐based differences in political knowledge have an impact on men's and women's participation in six different political activities. Methods. Utilizing ANES data from the five presidential elections between 1984 and 2000, we employ logistic regression to estimate the likelihood of voting, influencing a vote, attending a political meeting, working on a political campaign, wearing a political button, and maki…
Does Sex Encourage Commitment? The Impact of Candidate Choices on the Time-to-Decision
What Scarlett O'Hara Thinks: Political Attitudes of Southern Women
Explaining the Dynamics between the Women's Movement and the Conservative Movement in the United States
We examine the causes of movement and countermovement mobilization, focusing specifically on the effect that the national movements have on each other by responding directly to mobilization and indirectly through their policy successes. We discuss the mechanisms by which national movements respond to each other, and we examine the influence of political parties and social, political, and economic changes for women. We analyze these relationships …
Public Opinion as a Movement Outcome: The Case of the U.S. Women's Movement
We demonstrate that an important outcome of social movements is public opinion change, particularly in the case of the U.S. women's movement. We argue that contentious events associated with the women's movement provide informational cues that prime the public. This process then leads to changes in attitudes regarding gender. We use quarterly time series data on contentious events of the U.S. women's movement ranging from 1960 to 1992 and public …
Who Is Responsible for the Gender Gap? The Dynamics of Men’s and Women’s Democratic Macropartisanship, 1950–2012
I argue the gender gap is a function of men and women changing their partisanship as they seek the best representation of their gendered social identity from the political parties. Specifically, shifts in the parties due to party realignments and shifts in the composition of parties’ congressional delegations have provided individuals with a clearer signal on which to base their partisan attachments. Men and women have responded differently to th…
Conditional Motivated Reasoning: How the Local Economy Moderates Partisan Motivations in Economic Perceptions
Using motivated reasoning, voters rely on partisanship as a heuristic for evaluating the economy in belief-preserving ways. Yet recent findings show that these motivations may be restricted by a range of contextual factors. We argue that partisan motivations in economic perceptions are moderated by the local economic context. As conditions worsen, a negative information environment leads in-partisans to political ambivalence that reduces confiden…
Is it a Chasm? Is it a Canyon? No, it is the Gender Gap
Many speculated that we would observe a gender gap in vote choice of historic proportions in the 2018 midterm elections. However, the 2018 gender gap was similar to gender gaps in previous elections. I argue that the gender gap is not about a specific candidate or election but is driven by gender differences in partisan attachments. Variation in the gender gap in Senate and gubernatorial elections highlight that the gender gap does not advantage …
Marching to the Ballot Box: Sex and Voting in the 2020 Election Cycle
With the 2020 election marking the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, our attention has been keenly focused on women voters. Media coverage of women voters portrayed them as swing voters and focused on a small subgroup of women (white, married, mothers). I argue that women’s and men’s voting behavior in 2020 was highly similar to past elections and does not support the claims that women or a subgroup of women are swing v…
Introduction to Women's Political Involvement in the 100 Years since the Nineteenth Amendment
August 19, 2020, marks the centennial of ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, which guaranteed that the right to vote could not be denied on the basis of sex. The Nineteenth Amendment did not radically transform women’s political activism; rather, it was a product of women’s political activism. Women won the franchise in a 72-year battle fought at both the state and national levels. By the time the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified, women ha…
Bargain Shopping: How Candidate Sex Lowers the Cost of Voting
Previous research shows that candidate sex serves as a heuristic that lessens the informational burden of political decision making. Building upon this research, we investigate the heuristic effects of candidate sex on the decision to turnout to vote in an election. We posit that by providing ideological and nonideological information about the candidates, candidate sex serves as an informational shortcut that reduces the costs associated with vo…
Guns, Butter, and Growth: The Consequences of Military Spending Reconsidered
How does increasing military spending affect social spending and economic growth? We argue leaders vary in their preferences over how to pay for military spending and failing to account for interdependence among methods of government finance, government spending, and economic performance limits scholars’ ability to identify the consequences of military spending. We use vector autoregressive models to estimate the relationships among military spen…
You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling: How Gender Shapes Affective Polarization
We examine variation in levels of affective polarization for men and women. Using the 1980 to 2016 American National Election Studies, we find that women are more affectively polarized than men. The effect of sex partially works indirectly through political identities and issue positions. Moreover, sex acts as a moderator, with political identities and issues positions have different effects on men’s and women’s level of affective polarization. T…
Location, Location, Location: How Electoral Opportunities Shape Women's Emergence as Candidates
Despite evidence that women win when they run for office, the number of women in the US House of Representatives has not increased substantially. I argue that women win when they run because women engage in strategic behavior by emerging in locations where they are most likely to win. While strategic behavior is a necessary condition for increasing women's representation in office, it is not a sufficient condition. Analyzing regularly scheduled e…
Gender Candidate Evaluations and Campaign Donations
We consider how gendered evaluations of candidates shape potential donors’ support of hypothetical candidates for the state legislature. Using an experimental design, we test two pathways by which candidate gender can influence the support and donations received by candidates. Potential Democratic donors consistently evaluate women more positively than men. These positive evaluations translate into a slight fundraising advantage for women. There …
Law (17 works) · Political science (17 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (16 works) · Gender Politics and Representation (16 works) · Politics (16 works) · Law (12 works) · Economics (10 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Psychology (7 works) · Social Psychology (7 works)