Outsiders among outside groups? Campaign advertising and the electability of female US House candidates

Female candidates have long benefitted from their connections with PACs. However, many of the studies on women and PACs were published prior to the rise of ideologically-oriented Super PACs, 501c dark money groups, and 527s. To examine the impact of these newer groups on female candidates, this paper asks whether outside groups are less likely to take female opponents seriously during their television ad campaigns. We expect outside groups will run more ads for their preferred candidate when the opposing candidate is a male quality challenger because they believe those candidates present the biggest threat to achieving their partisan or ideological electoral goals. We test this expectation using data from Wesleyan Media Project, an original dataset containing biographical information on U.S. House candidates, the US Census, and the Cook Political Report. As expected, the number of ads that outside groups air is influenced by both the gender and the quality of the opposition to their preferred candidate. results the inflate statistically results