MIGHT WOMEN NOW HAVE THE EDGE - OPEN-SEAT HOUSE PRIMARIES

I present two arguments for hypothesizing that women might now have an edge over men in open-seat primaries. First, female candidates might be advantaged by a greater salience of women's issues to proponents th an opponents of those issues. Second, female candidates might be advan taged by a greater desire for descriptive representation among women t han among men. However, evidence from the 1992 and 1994 primaries is a ble to confirm that women consistently had a substantial advantage ove r men only in races with a high ratio of men to women contesting for t he nomination. Women had little or no advantage in races with relative ly equal numbers of men and women competing. That evidence suggests (a ) that the sex of a candidate can be a relevant voting cue for signifi cant blocs of voters (at least when it is highlighted by having a lone woman face several men), but (b) the pro-women and pro-men blocs tend to be fairly evenly balanced.