Unacceptable or “Part of the Job?” Public (In)Tolerance for Threats Against Women Politicians

In recent years, local politicians have documented a rapid increase in threats and intimidation, particularly against women. In light of this trend, we investigate how citizens evaluate threats directed towards women politicians. Building on existing work on stereotypes and evaluations, we argue that gender biases and threat severity will drive gendered differences in threat tolerance. These expectations are tested using an original survey experiment fielded through YouGov. Our findings suggest that, regardless of a politician's gender, citizens are generally intolerant of threats against local officeholders. This holds true even for low-level threats, which have the greatest potential for biases to erode norms of acceptability. Overall, our results provide cautiously optimistic evidence of the durability of democratic norms in the United States.