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Hillary Clinton, Female Voters, and Tall Poppies in the 2016 Election

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 September 2025

Dave Bridge
Dave Bridge*
Affiliation:
Baylor University , Waco, Texas
*
Email: david_bridge@baylor.edu
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Abstract

This article investigates female voting behavior in the 2016 US presidential election through the lens of tall poppy syndrome, a theory suggesting that those in less prominent or celebrated roles sometimes seek to undermine individuals who pursue or attain extraordinary public success. Using data from the ANES, VOTER, and CCES surveys and controlling for alternative explanations, I find that women outside the workforce were more likely to vote against Hillary Clinton, indicating that their voting behavior may have been driven by tall poppy syndrome rather than solely by social conservatism. These findings highlight an underexplored factor in voting behavior, suggest widening avenues of partisan polarization, and point to the unique challenges that are faced by women who seek elected office.

Keywords

Hillary Clintontall poppies syndromeUS 2016 electionvoting behaviorpartisan polarization in US electionscoalitions

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Type
Article
Information
Journal of Policy History , Volume 37 , Issue 4 , October 2025 , pp. 269 - 283
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press in association with Donald Critchlow

The 2016 presidential election witnessed unprecedented levels of gendered language, stereotypes, and attacks in mainstream political rhetoric.Footnote 1 The Republican nominee, Donald Trump, insinuated that electing a woman would be a national embarrassment. Referencing primary opponent Carly Fiorina, Trump said, “Can you imagine that, the face of our next president? I mean, she’s a woman.” During the general election, he asked an audience, “Do you think Hillary looks presidential? I don’t think so. And I’m not going to say it, because I’m not allowed to say it, because I want to be politically correct.”Footnote 2 Other men echoed these sentiments.Footnote 3 But what about female voters? Some opposed Clinton due to policy disagreements. Did others harbor negative feelings (e.g., disapproval or resentment) toward another woman for her trying to win the White House?

This article explores whether some female voters in 2016 voted against Hillary Clinton as an effort to “cut her down.” Using three separate databases, I examine the influence of occupational status—namely, whether a female survey respondent self-identified as a homemaker—on voting behavior in the 2016 presidential election. Borrowing from the psychology and communications literature, I apply the theory of “tall poppy syndrome,” which suggests that individuals in less publicly recognized or celebrated roles may act on negative feelings toward those who attain or pursue highly prominent positions.Footnote 4 I hypothesize that some female voters exemplified this dynamic in 2016. After controlling for multiple indicators of social conservativism that the homemaker variable might inadvertently measure, I find that women not in the workplace were more likely to vote against Clinton. I conclude that their motivation was driven, at least in part, by tall poppy syndrome.

I begin with the literature on the 2016 election, outlining expected influences on vote choice before turning to studies of women voters specifically. The next section describes the theory of tall poppy syndrome and its application to the 2016 election. I then discuss the observable implications of the theory and propose a method for measuring it within large-N data sets. After detailing the data and methods, I present the results. Ultimately, numerous factors affected female vote choice in the 2016 election. Nevertheless, the findings indicate that homemakers were statistically and substantively more likely to vote against Hillary Clinton. The conclusion revisits tall poppy syndrome, its role in the 2016 election, and its broader implications for American politics and the challenges that female candidates face when running for office.

Literature on the 2016 Election

I review two categories of scholarship dealing with the 2016 presidential election. The first includes conventional explanations of Donald Trump’s victory. The second includes those that examine why women voted for Trump in 2016.

Conventional Explanations

The 2016 election is an attractive case to investigate. It featured two novel candidates. Hillary Clinton was the first woman to be nominated by a major party for the White House, and Donald Trump, a career businessman and reality television star, was the surprise victor from a crowded field of Republican primary challengers. Clinton was experienced—a former First Lady, senator, and secretary of state. Trump was unconventional—tossing water at Marco Rubio, coining nicknames for his opponents like “Lyin’ Ted [Cruz]” and “Low Energy Jeb [Bush],” and promising to “drain the swamp.” Even before Election Day, the uniqueness of candidates allowed for interesting, testable hypotheses.

Election Day’s results heightened political scientists’ curiosity. Had about 40,000 Trump voters in the “blue wall” states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin voted for Clinton instead, she would have won. Thus, any voting indicator found to be significant can plausibly be described as a consequential explanation of how and why Trump won.

Many point to commonplace factors that would hold in any presidential election such as party identification, ideology, or perceptions of the economy. As expected, many Republicans voted Republican because they were Republican. The relative weight of control variables might have been different in 2016 than in other recent elections, but the list of control variables remained the same, and scholars have parsed their interactions. For instance, one article elucidates “the roots of right-wing populism” in 2016, concluding that social conservatism, economic considerations, and party identification turned the election.Footnote 5 Sides, Tesler, and Vavreck present a compelling argument that 2016 did not break the conventional political rules. Instead, partisanship fused with emerging issues of the day such as race, immigration, and religion.Footnote 6 Article titles reflect broad themes that understandably—and predictably—affected vote choice:

  • • Economic anxiety, racial identification, and well-being

  • • Sexism, racism, and nationalism

  • • Social structure, culture, and the allure of Donald Trump

  • • White polarization, racism, and sexism

  • • Economic conditions and racial attitudesFootnote 7

Some scholars focus on specific issues that affected subgroups of 2016 voters, with many employing conventional narratives to explain their behavior. For example, evangelicals and conservative populists shared many concerns that caused both groups to vote Republican in 2016.Footnote 8 Different perceptions of nationalism (exclusionary versus inclusionary) affected partisanship, which affected voting.Footnote 9 Fake news, local concerns, and a growing urban/rural divide also played a role.Footnote 10

Other studies present novel interpretations of recent developments. For instance, one team examined voters who switched from Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016. They identified opposition to free trade and immigration as causing the flip.Footnote 11 Mutz studies the “left behind” thesis, finding that traditionally high-status white Christian men voted for Trump due to perceived threats to their status rather than baseline economic concerns. Others refute Mutz, citing economic factors as key.Footnote 12

Women Voters in 2016

There is a robust literature on female voters in 2016. Some work demonstrates little difference between male and female voters. Sex and race played a role, with some researchers identifying these factors as benefiting Trump and others concluding that their intersection helped Clinton.Footnote 13 Fieldwork interviews conclude that efforts to portray Clinton as a “b****” hurt her chances among female voters.Footnote 14 After the notorious Access Hollywood video surfaced, Trump lost support—but not among women.Footnote 15 Cassese and Holman test hostile sexism (i.e., explicitly antagonistic and power-based) against benevolent sexism (i.e., subversive and subordination-based). Respondents shown Trump’s claim that “the only thing she’s [Clinton’s] got going is the woman card” increased their level of support for Trump if they held hostile sexist views; benevolent sexists decreased their support for Trump. Women who were exposed to the treatment became more likely to vote for Clinton.Footnote 16

A more focused literature explores why a majority (about 52%) of white women voted for Trump in 2016. Junn argues that it was unsurprising given white women’s consistently Republican preferences since the 1950s.Footnote 17 Standard indicators of vote choice—such as abortion preferences, educational attainment, and views on the Bible—predictably influenced white women’s choices.Footnote 18 Meanwhile, agreement with the statement that “electing more women is important” had no effect on the vote choice of white women.Footnote 19

In total, the literature on the 2016 election contains both standard and novel interpretations. Because of Trump’s narrow victory, any significant factor, by itself, is likely to have turned the election. My interest, then, is not in determining whether the theory here uncovers why Trump won but in leveraging the historical precedent of a woman running for president to add another piece to the 2016 puzzle. The next section introduces a new theory to the study of women voters in 2016.

Tall Poppy Syndrome

Individuals who occupy less publicly celebrated or institutionally powerful roles sometimes express resentment toward or disapproval of those who visibly ascend to prestigious or exclusive positions. The former may seek to denigrate or undermine the latter. High achievers are “tall poppies” who stand out, and “poppy clippers” seek to cut them down. Tall poppy syndrome is this “perceived tendency to discredit or disparage those who have achieved notable wealth or prominence in public life.”Footnote 20 This theory of social interaction has deep roots in psychological, managerial, and communications studies, with scholarship in all three fields pointing to the same dynamic: poppy clippers’ discomfort with others’ conspicuous achievement affects their behavior.

Much work on tall poppy syndrome comes from Australia and New Zealand. Scholars highlight the egalitarian cultures of the two countries, with one author noting those societies’ shared belief that “people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities.”Footnote 21 Although nonegalitarian issues persist, particularly regarding the treatment of First Nations people in Australia and the Maori in New Zealand, these countries often live up to their egalitarian reputations. For instance, New Zealand was the first country to grant women the right to vote, and both have relatively high standards of living. More importantly, many Australians and New Zealanders maintain a perception of egalitarianism. Thus, tall poppy syndrome may be a product of expectations of fairness and equality. In any case, a rich literature convincingly demonstrates that low achievers experience tall poppy syndrome.

The reasons for which people “cut down” tall poppies are complex. Some experience feelings of low self-worth and/or self-esteem, and they turn to pushing others down. Similarly, poor performers who struggle with their lack of praise, advancement, or rewards may turn to cutting down tall poppies. Others feel threatened by fast risers and lop the competition before it succeeds.Footnote 22 Still others believe they were denied the resources or opportunities afforded to tall poppies. Although their behavior would be better directed at the supposedly unfair system rather than any single high achiever, their solution is, again, to cut individuals down.Footnote 23

Tall poppy syndrome manifests across society: in businesses, medical facilities, government buildings, nongovernmental organizations, and high schools.Footnote 24 Standout athletes, especially young women, face disapproval from peers. One 16-year-old girl lamented, “I’m so fed up of [sic] being yelled at across the playground, ‘There goes that f****** b****.’”Footnote 25 Successful entrepreneurs—again, especially women—avoid discussing their achievements in fear of being cut down. “Do you know what pisses me off,” one entrepreneur fumed, “and people say it to me constantly: ‘You are so lucky.’”Footnote 26 Female educational administrators report similar experiences, with one noting, “Many of the teachers were … not inclined to accept leadership from a woman. And the women teachers were less inclined.”Footnote 27

Poppy clippers choose from a variety of tools. Nonverbal messages include menacing glares, eye rolls, stonewalling, procrastinating, playing dumb, and “losing” important information the target needs. Verbal messages include denigration, ridicule, and gossip. Mancl and Penington write about one woman who was accused of having an affair with her supervisor after receiving praise for her work. As one clipper admitted, “We choose to be passive-aggressive just to appear to be nice … because nobody wants to look like a b****.”Footnote 28 Some poppy clippers even exhibit schadenfreude, taking joy of another’s misfortune. In one study, participants played a betting game and kept their winnings. As they played, they could see how much other players had won. Players could secretly burn away others’ winnings, but it cost them 25% of their own money, too—yet nearly two-thirds chose to do so.Footnote 29

I theorize that tall poppy syndrome can be applied to Hillary Clinton’s presidential run. As one of the most politically successful women in United States history—First Lady, US senator, secretary of state, and the first woman nominated for the presidency by a major party—Clinton was a tall poppy. Although the US lacks Australia/New Zealand-style institutions, I submit that the perception of egalitarianism is significant in American society. Americans may define egalitarianism differently—liberty, equality, opportunity, justice—but most believe in it. Thus, conditions are sufficiently similar to other places in the world where tall poppy syndrome measurably exists. I predict that some women saw Clinton as a tall poppy and voted against her to cut her down.

Cutting Clinton Down

This section examines why studying Clinton and homemakers is an appropriate avenue for inquiry. It then offers theoretical links among the latter’s experiences, feelings, and vote choice.

Some might argue that Clinton’s uniqueness makes the case selection questionable. They might point out that Hillary Clinton was not a typical female candidate. She had baggage from (to name some items) being put in charge of passing national health care in 1993, staying with her husband after his infidelity, an email scandal, and depictions of Clinton as a cold and overly ambitious woman. I do not deny that these informed Clinton’s detractors. However, I would point out that anybody who happened to be the first woman competitively running for the presidency was going to face a tidal wave of accusations. Some complaints (e.g., marriage to Bill Clinton) would have differed; others (e.g., “She is too ambitious”) likely would have been the same. In other words, any female candidate for president—especially the first—would have been subject to tall poppy syndrome. Hillary Clinton may have been a particularly fraught candidate due to her baggage or a particularly qualified candidate due to her experience. I resist weighing those interpretations and assert simply that Hillary Clinton is a woman. That is the necessary and sufficient condition.

I focus solely on female voters. Tall poppy syndrome could apply to all males and females, but I examine female voters because the representative aspect allows for theoretical linkage with my operationalization. Tall poppy syndrome is especially pronounced within subgroups. As described above, female poppy clippers cut down female tall poppies in schools, sports, leadership, and industry.Footnote 30 I extend the theory to politics.

Why would some women exhibit poppy clipper behavior toward Clinton in 2016? Literature suggests that internalized negative feelings—such as disapproval, resentment, lack of opportunity, and schadenfreude—could drive women to cut down another woman, in this case Hillary Clinton. Unlike in the settings already described, where poppy clippers believe they could do the job better, I do not believe that women who voted against Clinton did so because they wanted to be president. Rather, I put forward that they harbored negative feelings toward another woman seeking the presidency and the visibility, authority, and acclaim that come with it. One study quotes a female Trump supporter, “Theresa,” who said, “It’s an ego thing for her to get to be the first female president.”Footnote 31 This response typifies poppy clipping. I propose that some women’s negative feelings influenced their likelihood of voting for a female candidate.

I turn to homemakers as a group whose role in society may lead to complicated attitudes toward women in highly visible and aspirational electoral positions. Women who self-identified as homemakers may have felt disapproval, jealousy, resentment over a lack of opportunity for themselves, or even joy at the prospect of seeing another woman lose. I cannot connect those feelings directly to voters—interviewers do not ask respondents about their glee at imagining a dejected Hillary Clinton calling Donald Trump to concede. However, a plausible link can be made between a woman’s working status and whether she voted for a female presidential candidate.

The symbolism of winning the presidential election cannot be overestimated. The president is probably the most recognizable and powerful person in the world. Every president since Franklin Roosevelt has been named Time magazine’s “Person of the Year.” In fact, the president has earned the award nearly as many times (24) as all heads of state and government from all other countries combined (28). It is likely the hardest job in the country to obtain given the amount of money needed to run a campaign, the exposure of personal details campaigning entails, and the number of people needed to agree to the hiring decision (currently, around 75 million voters). In nearly 250 years of constitutional history, only about 100 individuals have had a serious chance of running for the White House. Hillary Clinton was the first woman to make that list.

Homemakers might look at Hillary Clinton’s run for the presidency and experience the negative feelings associated with tall poppy syndrome. This is not to say homemakers do not work or that their contributions—to their household, to their community, or to the nation at large—are worth less than anyone else’s (even those of one running for president). Homemakers simply inhabit a different role than those who pursue careers in the public, political, or professional sphere, one far less likely to involve public acclaim or an upward professional trajectory. I make no normative judgment about either; they are, again, different. Thus, it is theoretically explainable that someone who does not see her own life reflected in the highest levels of public leadership might experience unease or even disapproval toward another woman seeking the nation’s highest office.

Determining the exact mechanism that turns “disapproval” into vote choice is challenging. Homemakers might envy a path they did not follow. Perhaps they feel constrained by necessity or by a spouse who demands a stay-at-home wife. Tall poppy scholars note that poppy clippers sometimes believe that opportunities were unfairly distributed. Homemakers might have felt that they lacked the chance to, say, attend Yale Law School or be appointed secretary of state. At the theory’s most extreme, homemakers may have wanted to deny Clinton an office that they could never imagine attaining. That is, homemakers may have been less likely to vote for Clinton because they saw another woman at the threshold of the pinnacle of American society—a position they believed was either out of reach or inappropriate. Everyone—Clinton and the homemakers—might be satisfied with their respective positions. But tall poppy theory predicts that poppy clippers find satisfaction in seeing others fail to reach their goals. I would not assign this extreme interpretation to most poppy clippers in 2016. But it is helpful in suggesting the range of potential motivations, from subtle discomfort to intentional “If I can’t have it then neither can she” spite.

I would suggest one possible mechanism: that tall poppy syndrome might cause homemakers to believe negative stereotypes about female candidates. These stereotypes—whether regarding competency, assertiveness, or leadership style—can be activated by discomfort with women who challenge traditional gender roles. For instance, stereotype reliance can lead to evaluations of women as less capable of handling executive power on “masculine” issues (as identified by the literature) like defense and economics. The effect might be more pronounced during crises, which presidents inevitably must address. Like everyday issues, these crises come in in both “masculine” (e.g., war) and “feminine” (e.g., COVID) varieties. The purview of stereotyping goes beyond specific issues, too, as stereotypes often cast female personalities as warm but weak, compassionate but indecisive—pairings that some might find undesirable for the Oval Office. Indeed, scholarship finds that voters who believe these stereotypes are less supportive of female candidates.Footnote 32

Importantly, negative feelings are not always held consciously or with animus. Instead, homemakers may find it cognitively or culturally difficult to imagine a woman successfully wielding executive authority. Tall poppy syndrome might not only trigger emotional resistance but also reinforce and activate widely believed narratives about women’s supposed unsuitability for high office. In summary, although I cannot definitively delineate the tall poppy reasoning of every homemaker, I put forward that such reasoning is worth exploring and that differently rationalized manifestations of the overarching dynamic are likely to have been at play for different poppy clippers. I theorize, hypothesize, and test. I welcome different explanatory interpretations.

Data and Methods

I use three data sets: the 2016 American National Election Studies (ANES) Survey, the 2016 Democracy Fund Views of the Electorate Research (VOTER) Survey, and the 2017 Cooperative Congressional Election Survey (CCES). All three databases contain the same variables that I test. I could not aggregate the three into a single database because they measure some terms differently. Nevertheless, using three surveys allows us to see if patterns hold across data sets. The dependent variable is two-party vote choice for Clinton in 2016. The independent variable of interest, homemaker, is a binary variable created from each survey’s question about occupation. Each survey includes a provided option for homemaker.

On its own, homemaker might measure something other than tall poppy syndrome—perhaps, for example, party identification. Verdant Labs’ “Democratic vs. Republican Occupations” lists Homemakers as splitting 62%/38% in favor of Republican affiliation.Footnote 33 Then again, that party split might measure a more fundamental variable: maybe homemakers are Republican because of an underlying social conservatism. One measure of this would be traditionalist religious affiliation. Consider a 2014 Pew poll that found that Catholic and evangelical respondents were more likely than mainline Protestant and religiously unaffiliated respondents to believe that children are better off with a stay-at-home parent.Footnote 34 This aligns with Catholic and evangelical complementarianism, which can trickle down into an expectation that female congregants avoid the workplace, especially after childbirth.Footnote 35 Homemaker status, as well as political behavior, could thus reflect genuinely held socially conservative views. When homemakers voted against Clinton, it might look like poppy clipping when they were simply expressing genuine preferences for a socially conservative candidate. These are reasonable, competing explanations.

To account for homemaker’s possible other effects, I load up on other variables that measure social conservatism. Party identification captures this broadly. More directly, ideology is measured on a five-point (VOTER and CCES) or seven-point (ANES) scale from very/extremely liberal to very/extremely conservative. I also include religious variables, using the operationalization scheme from the religion and politics literature of belief, belonging, and behavior.Footnote 36 To measure belief, I use a question about whether the Bible is the word of God or men (ANES) and a Pew-developed question on the importance of religion (VOTER and CCES). For belonging, I use Catholic and born-again dummy variables. For behavior, I use frequency of church attendance. Including all these variables provides a tougher test for the homemaker term. Various combinations of the variables returned substantively similar results. Additional controls include age, income, education, views of the economy, and race and ethnicity (Black and Latina).

Results

Table 1 presents the results from each model. Many effects align with predictions. Party identification is the most powerful predictor. A trio of measures for social conservatism prove statistically significant: ideology, religious belief (views on the Bible or importance of religion), and born-again. Education levels, perceptions of the economy, and race and ethnicity are also significant.Footnote 37

Table 1.

Vote Choice

Note: DV = two-party vote for Clinton in 2016.

* p < .05 (one-tailed).

The “Impact” column for each specification looks at the marginal influence of each variable while holding all others at their means.Footnote 38 For instance, holding all variables at their means, going from a non-Black voter to a Black voter in the ANES model increases the likelihood of voting for Clinton by 35.2 percentage points. The marginal differences are as follows:

  • • Homemaker, Republican, Democrat, Born Again, Black, Latina—binary (0 to 1)

  • • Ideology—liberal to conservative

  • • Religious Belief—“Bible is actual word of God” to “Bible is written by men” (ANES); religion is “very important” to “not at all important” (VOTER and CCES)

  • • Economy—economy is “somewhat better than last year” to “somewhat worse” (ANES); the economy is “getting better” to “getting worse” (VOTER); over the past year your personal economic situation has “gotten somewhat better” to “gotten somewhat worse” (CCES)

  • • Education—high school graduate to college graduate

  • • Income—$50,000 to $150,000

  • • Age—25 years old to 75 years old

Homemaker returned statistically significant coefficients in all three models. Despite competing against several variables that capture social conservatism, the homemaker variable still had an effect. Let us consider two female voters with the same partisanship, ideology, religious affiliation, and other modeled traits. One is a homemaker and the other is not. The homemaker is between 7.7 and 21.9 percentage points less likely to have voted for Clinton in 2016 than the nonhomemaker. This is a substantively impactful difference.

Concluding Discussion

The 2016 presidential election offers an instructive case study for examining tall poppy syndrome among female voters. When combined with a host of other variables that capture important alternative explanations for women’s anti-Clinton votes, homemaker serves as a credible proxy for those prone to feel negatively toward the election’s female candidate. Although standard variables like party identification and ideology maintain their expected effects on vote choice, homemaker has a significant and substantive effect. This suggests that homemaker status is not merely another measure of social conservatism but leads to tall poppy syndrome when a woman runs for president. I close here by reexamining the alternative explanation of social conservatism and by discussing implications for partisan polarization and for scholars of American politics.

Let us return to the alternative explanation for the homemaker variable—that it simply reflects conservatism. I control for this with party identification, ideology measures, and religious variables based on belief, belonging, and behavior. Even with these controlled for, homemaker remains significant. Removing homemaker from the model does not dramatically alter the coefficients or substantive effects of other terms measuring social conservativism. Instead, its exclusion removes a distinct effect.

This could mean one of two things. First, homemaker may capture a unique aspect of conservatism that other variables do not; homemakers’ conservatism may be distinct from that reflected in any or all of the other variables. Let us make this more concrete. One could be an extremely conservative born-again Republican who attended church every week and believed the Bible was the actual word of God, and yet, those facts alone would not capture the full picture of one’s conservatism. Instead, one’s status as a homemaker would be the missing item that all of those other descriptors missed. This seems unlikely.

More likely, homemaker captures something beyond conventional measures of conservatism, which are still included in the models. Before considering tall poppy syndrome, let us test one other explanation: that homemakers, especially self-identified ones, are more likely to perceive women as not belonging in the workplace. Fortunately, one of the studies (ANES) asks just such a question: “Is it better if the man works and the woman takes care of the home?” Responses range on a seven-point scale from “much better” to “much worse.” Homemakers were much more likely than nonhomemakers—by 13 percentage points—to say that it was “much better” for men to work and women to take care of the home. They were much less likely—by 20 percentage points—to answer that it “makes no difference.” Given this, perhaps homemakers were not trying to cut Clinton down but simply believed that women should not work at all, including but not limited to as president.

I include this term in a separate model (see Table 1). It is significant, with a substantive difference between women who say it is “much better” for men to work and those who say it “makes no difference,” but homemaker retains its significance, too, without any substantive change in its coefficient. In other words, homemakers’ perception of women’s proper roles does not fully account for why they voted against Hillary Clinton. Indeed, the combination of partisanship, ideology, religion, and views on gender roles does not fully capture the overall mechanism. Even after testing a rigorous battery of terms measuring social conservatism, homemaker still partially explains female vote choice in 2016. All else equal, women who were not in the workforce were more likely to vote against Hillary Clinton. I suggest it is because they were cutting down a tall poppy.

One broader implication of this study concerns the relationship among identity, affect, and partisan polarization. If tall poppy syndrome explains why homemakers were less likely to support Hillary Clinton, then polarization may not be purely driven by party platforms or elite signaling but also by deep-seated social and psychological dynamics. Partisan identity can become fused with affective judgments about who deserves status, who deserves power, and who ought to lead. In this way, political divisions are not only about what policies one supports but also about what kinds of people one wishes to see in charge. Clinton’s candidacy—the attempt by a woman to occupy the most symbolically (not to mention materially) powerful position in the country—may have triggered not just policy-based opposition but also identity-based discomfort among voters who did not see themselves reflected in her ambition or achievement.

The presence of high-profile female candidates in electoral politics, especially at the presidential level, may also create incentives for both parties to polarize around gender norms. For the Republican Party, candidates like Hillary Clinton or Kamala Harris can become symbolic foils, allowing the GOP to galvanize voters through subversive appeals to traditional views of gender roles, playing to their discomfort with perceived ambition in women. This is not just a matter of platform positions but of eliciting emotional responses about what women should or should not do in society. On the other side, the Democratic Party may respond by casting the Republican Party as hostile to women’s advancement. In doing so, Democrats may exaggerate or essentialize their opponents’ views, further heightening partisan polarization. Neither side should be seen as uniquely blameworthy in this process. Rather, the process reflects how the presence of female candidates incentivizes both parties to draw sharper lines and lean into cultural conflict and partisan polarization.Footnote 39

If this dynamic exists, female candidates have yet another disadvantage they must surmount. They already must overcome unfair negative stereotypes, such as that they are not tough or “likeable.”Footnote 40 The media covers female candidates differently.Footnote 41 They are judged for their wardrobe choices in a way that male candidates are not.Footnote 42 They feel as if they must perform better than their male counterparts to be seen as legitimate.Footnote 43 Must they also overcome poppy clippers?

The effect might be the most pronounced at the presidential level. With its visibility and symbolism, the American presidency is the zenith of any political career, but perhaps poppy clippers can accept a woman’s serving in a lower office. City councils and school boards might okay, but the state legislature or Congress could make for too tall of a poppy. Or maybe any legislative or judicial seat is fine, but women running for executive offices (from mayor to president) experience clipping. Put differently, research in other electoral settings would shed light on the extent to which female candidates face this hurdle.

This study demonstrates that tall poppy syndrome may influence presidential vote choice when a female candidate runs. But how tall poppy syndrome would affect the dependent variable remains murky. We have plausible explanations such as resentment, perceptions of unfair differences in opportunity, discomfort with women in leadership, stereotyping, and schadenfreude. But how much explanatory power does each have? Developing mutually exclusive measures and tests for these feelings (or others) would help to clarify how the mechanism works. But fundamentally, these results suggest that some female voters voted against a female presidential candidate because she was a female presidential candidate.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Regina Wagner for editing such an important special edition. Thanks also to Pat Flavin, Aime Hogue, Blakely Lowe, and Jonathan Schneiderman.

References

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Figure 0

Table 1. Vote Choice