Nowhere to Run // Race, Gender, and Immigration in American Elections

Why has the underrepresentation of women and racial minorities in elected office proved so persistent? Many researchers have asserted that the main shortfall happens at the candidacy stage--women and people of color are competitive candidates, but too few throw their hat into the ring. However, these studies are animated by two assumptions that tend to speak past each other. On the one hand, gender and politics scholars often suggest that women lack sufficient ambition to run for office relative to men. On the other hand, race and politics scholars have suggested that districts with majority white populations do not provide adequate resources or opportunities for minority candidates to succeed. These approaches tend to treat women and racial minorities as parallel social groups, and fail to account for the ways in which race and gender simultaneously shape candidacy.   Nowhere to Run introduces the intersectional model of electoral opportunity, which argues that descriptive represen