Southern Accents and Partisan Stereotypes: Evaluating Political Candidates

Objective Recent research suggests that many American voters use candidate accents as an evaluative heuristic. We build on this research by examining whether this effect is conditional on the partisan positions of the candidate and across participant party identification. Methods We designed an experiment using actors to record candidate stump speeches, manipulating the accent of the candidate and the partisan issue position of the candidate. Results Democrats and Republicans in our sample were more likely to believe candidates with southern accents were Republican as opposed Democrat, and were also more likely to negatively evaluate candidates with a southern accent. This was true in both instances regardless of whether the candidate espoused a typical Democratic or Republican issue position. Democrats’ judgments of candidates with southern accents, though, were harsher than those of Republicans and, again, this was the case across the partisan positioning of the candidate. Finally, both Democrats and Republicans in our pool were less likely to say they would vote for the candidate with a southern accent regardless of the partisan position of the candidate. Conclusion Our results confirm that accent is a heuristic and add nuance to our understanding of how partisanship shapes this effect.