Youth Advantage Versus Gender Penalty: Selecting and Electing Young Candidates

Abstract

Young people are under-represented in formal politics. While this may be a mere projection of their lack among voters and party members, the article investigates whether being young is a disadvantage in election processes, and if age effects differ by gender. Bridging the literature on gender & politics and political behavior, the article draws on an innovative sequential mixed-method design. Studying the 2019 Irish local elections, it uses 33 interviews to build hypotheses, which are subsequently tested on an original candidate-level dataset ( n = 1884). The findings suggest that, when controlling for party affiliation and political status, being young can provide a net electoral advantage to male candidates. In contrast, young female candidates appear to be advantaged by their age but penalized by their gender. The article thus contributes to our understanding about the conditions right at the start of political careers and the emergence of intersectional representational inequalities.