Holden Skeels and Peyton Hyland, “The Electoral Success of Diversity in State-Level Elections: Utilizing the Candidate Characteristics Cooperative (C3) Project”
Mentor: Paru Shah, Political Science

Today, we are witnessing a rise in the campaign and election of female candidates and candidates of color in the United States. The scarcity of data concerning the race, ethnicity, and gender of candidates and elected officials within lower levels of government poses many challenges to researchers attempting to create effective datasets and develop better theories around diversity, campaigning, and electoral politics. We ask what degree of influence the diversity of state-level candidates in terms of race, ethnicity, and gender holds over their success in primary elections. To supplement the Candidate Characteristics Cooperative (C3) Project, we have coded data for state-level primary candidates using political encyclopedias such as Ballotpedia.org, as well as online campaign platforms and public social network profiles. We have also accordingly collected the vote totals for each candidate in their primary election, as well as for those of each candidate in the succeeding general election. We anticipate that more diverse state-level candidates will tend to have a better rate of  success in primary elections than less diverse candidates. Because the C3 Project aims to create a comprehensively formatted database, it allows individual researchers to posit and investigate new theories with relative ease.