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Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction. Challenges to the Double Disadvantage Theory -- PART I. Attitudinal Advantages for Latinas -- 1. Gender and Racial Attitudes in Politics -- 2. Positive Interaction of Gender and Race/Ethnicity -- PART II. Political and Electoral Advantages for Latinas -- 3. Predicting Latina Political Office-holding -- 4. Diverse State Legislators in Texas -- 5. Diverse State Legislators in California -- Conclusion. Explanations for Latina Political Success -- Appendix -- Bibliography -- Index

"Many questions remain unanswered about the observable differences in voting behavior, partisanship, and cultural attitudes among men and women. Latino political participation in the United States is generally lower than the rest of the population, mainly due to their high proportion of youth and foreign born populations that are ineligible to vote. This dynamic is slowing changing, partly as a result of the rapidly growing Latino population in the United States. This book delves deeper into the complex gender differences for Latino political behavior. More specifically, it is a political analysis of the diverse U.S. Latino population and the interacting factors that can influence male and female differences in voting and policy attitudes. Christina E. Bejarano carefully unpacks more aspects of the gender category for Latinos, including analyzing the gender differences in Latino political behavior across national origin, foreign born status, and generational status. The Latino gender gap can have far-reaching political implications on electoral politics. As the Latino population highlights their growing political sway, the major political parties have and will strategically mobilize and court the Latino electorate, Latinas in particular."--

The authors contrast the 2002 Senate and 2003 gubernatorial runoffs in Louisiana, noting that the margin and the breadth of victory were greater for a gubernatorial candidate who enjoyed less political resources than her copartisan. The authors argue that the GOP's southern strategy has constrained its ability to diversify its coalition and contributed to the defeat of its nonwhite candidate for governor. Using aggregate parish level data and individual survey responses, the authors demonstrate that the customary polarization of whites in favor of Republican nominees was undermined in the 2003 election. The authors offer some thoughts on the implications of the findings.

Scholars of gender and race have long acknowledged the importance that descriptive representation plays for marginalized groups, if not substantively than symbolically. Yet, as candidate pools diversify to better reflect the population, it becomes less clear which among intersecting and overlapping identities will matter and how. Employing data from the 2016 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey, we explore the association between minority voters' sense of linked fate and their beliefs about candidates who share (or do not share) their gender and racial identities. Using this timely and unique data, collected immediately after the 2016 election when race and gender were of particular salience, we examine whether shared racial and gender identity is associated with Black and Latina/o voters' beliefs about how well different candidates will represent their interests. We conclude by discussing the implications of our research for the changing face of American political candidates and voters.

AbstractResearch on political representation demonstrates that the presence of historically underrepresented groups in political office (descriptiverepresentation) can have not only asubstantiveimpact on policies and procedures but also asymbolicimpact that changes the attitudes and even behavior of those groups. The dynamics of group identity and its significance for representation, however, are complicated. Individuals often hold multiple identities, and the meanings attached to those identities may vary in relation to each other and to the particular political context. In this article, we provide an intersectional analysis of two minoritized ethno-racial groups, African Americans and Latinos/as. Using data from the 2016 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey, we explore the extent to which shared identity matters for perceptions of representation. Our findings demonstrate that while shared identity does influence perceptions of representation, the impact varies in complicated ways that are simultaneously raced and gendered.