Unacceptable or “Part of the Job?” Public (In)Tolerance for Threats Against Women Politicians

In recent years, local politicians have documented a rapid increase in threats and intimidation,particularly against women. We examine how citizens evaluate threatsdirected at local officials, focusing on the severity of the threat and the gender of thetargeted politician. Using a preregistered survey experiment fielded through YouGov,respondents evaluated a threat made against a man or woman school board memberthat varied in severity. We find that threat severity is a critical determinant structuringpublic judgments. Severe threats are overwhelmingly condemned and classified asviolent, whereas mild threats generate greater disagreement and are more often perceivedas being a “part of the job.” In contrast, we find little evidence that politiciangender affects public tolerance, even in low-severity contexts where we theorize genderedexpectations will operate. We demonstrate that this null effect is not driven bycross-cutting hostile or benevolent sexist attitudes. Overall, we find that norms againstpolitical violence remain durable, but are less rigid in ambiguous contexts, highlightingthe central role of threat severity in shaping public tolerance of political hostility.These results suggest that efforts to protect democratic participation should focus onenforcing boundaries around low-level threats, where slippage of norms is most likely.