Threats of Violence and Political Ambition: Experimental Evidence

Politicians and candidates for political office are increasingly subject to threats, harassment and physical violence. Does anticipated exposure to violence affect political ambition? Leveraging an original survey fielded with US citizens (n = 4582), I document that concerns about exposure to violence are salient, that Americans on average overestimate the risk of exposure relative to a scholarly benchmark, and that overestimation is particularly pronounced among women, queer, and nonwhite citizens. I then estimate the causal effect of providing corrective aggregate information about the risk of facing violence in office. Downward-correcting aggregate information has a small positive effect on individual political ambition, and a large positive effect on support for the political ambitions of a hypothetical office-seeking peer. The increase in support for peer ambition is nearly twice as large for female compared to male peers. Fear of violence constitutes an important obstacle to diverse representation.