Voter Perceptions of Disabled Candidates in Britain and the US, 2020-2021

Much is known about the effects of candidate characteristics, such as gender, age, and ethnicity, on voter perceptions and support. Meanwhile, very little research on citizens' attitudes towards and stereotypes about disabled candidates and politicians has been conducted. This dataset provides the opportunity to explore how citizens perceive disabled candidates. The data comes from a survey conducted in Britain and the US in 2020 and 2021 among representative samples of the populations of approx. 3,000 respondents in each country. The surveys include two survey experiments with conjoint designs, where respondents are presented with vignettes describing two fictional candidates competing for election. A range of candidate attributes are randomly varied, including whether candidates are blind, Deaf, wheelchair users, or not described as disabled. The design allows identifying the effects of disability and other candidate attributes on respondents' perceptions of the candidates' traits, issue priorities, issue competence, and representative links. The surveys also include a range of measures of respondents' socio-demographic characteristics, in particular their experience with disability, and political attitudes.