Take, for example, the issue of gender representation in politics. Despite the fact that they comprise more than half of our nation’s population, women are profoundly underrepresented in American politics. And the easy answer—sexism—only partially explains the problem. Indeed, private opinion research conducted by Populace found that 79 percent of respondents agreed with the statement “A woman is equally capable as a man of being a good president of the United States.” Moreover, when they get to a general election—whether at the local, state, or national level—women actually win at the same rate as men.
But the moment you ask, “Is a woman as electable as a man?” everything changes. Because, at the most fundamental level, electability is about what you think other people think, not which candidate you believe is the most capable. For instance, the political scientist Regina Bateson found that most people didn’t personally care about a candidate’s gender. However, once they learned that a competing candidate with the same qualifications was a white male, they overwhelmingly deemed him the most electable.
Given the structure of our winner-take-all politics, voters regularly play “who-can-win” games that highlight our societal biases. So they think, “I’m not sexist, but other people are, so I’m going to vote for the white man because I want my party to win.” This is exactly the problem with collective illusions. You may, in fact, be the least sexist person on the planet, but nevertheless your misreading of other people may lead you to become part of the problem without realizing it.
This problem isn’t just hypothetical: we actually saw it play out in the 2020 presidential election. In a poll conducted prior to the Democratic convention, Avalanche Insights asked Democratic voters whom they would choose if the election were held that day. They responded (1) Joe Biden, (2) Bernie Sanders, and (3) Elizabeth Warren. However, when asked whom they would choose if they could just wave a magic wand and that person would automatically become president, respondents selected Elizabeth Warren as the winner, hands down.
Bateson calls this phenomenon “strategic discrimination.” As she explains, the problem here “is not animus toward the candidate. In contrast to direct bias, strategic discrimination is motivated by the belief that a candidate’s identity will cause other people not to donate, volunteer, or vote for him or her.” Thus, “Americans consider white male candidates more electable than equally qualified Black women and white women and, to a lesser extent, Black men.”