Who Else Is Running? Reference Dependence in Candidate Evaluations

Abstract

Research assessing how voters evaluate political candidates often focuses on the effects of particular attributes (e.g., race, gender, partisanship). I submit that voters’ perceptions of candidates may depend not only on candidates’ own traits and features, but those of other candidates running against them. Drawing on literature on reference dependence, I argue that the same candidate may be perceived in significantly different ways depending on whether or not voters evaluate the candidate as a single entity or as one option in a multicandidate field. An original survey experiment reveals that under certain circumstances, Republicans and Democrats both adjust their evaluations of party candidates as a function of the presence of other candidates. I conclude with a discussion of this project’s implications for a larger body of work looking at reference dependence in American elections.