This virtual issue features a number of recent (and less recent) articles published in Politics & Gender which offer useful perspective for thinking about women and gender in the current presidential primary contest.

In “A Feminine Advantage?”, Nichole Bauer demonstrates how acting in traditionally feminine ways and talking about traditionally feminine issues may have different impacts on how voters evaluate women candidates. Kathleen Dolan and Timothy Lynch challenge the traditional conventional wisdom that voters apply gender stereotypes differently to women running for (collaborative) legislative positions versus (independent) executive positions, relevant findings for the current crop of female candidates.

As the remaining Democratic candidates increasingly “go negative” in their quest for the nomination, Justin Bonest Phillips investigates whether women and men react differently to presidential candidate attacks, in this case, on Facebook. Melissa Deckman and Erin Cassese show how what they call "gendered nationalism" — concerns that American society has grown "too soft and feminine" — help explain voting in the 2016. Their insight that these attitudes, which both women and men express, although to differing degrees, offer better explanations for vote choice than does voter gender alone has important implications for thinking about voters in 2020.

Elizabeth Simas and Marcia Bumgardner explore how discourse about women’s issues, including rape, contraception, and “binders' full of women” shaped the 2012 presidential campaign; many of these same issues are likely to shape the 2020 campaign as well. Kitchens and Swers’ work on the ways in which fundraising contributes to the under-representation of Republican women in Congress offers insights into the fundraising experiences of women and men candidates in 2020.

Finally, Sue Carroll brings her unrivaled eye and experience as a women and politics scholar to exploring how gender shaped Hillary Clinton’s 2008 failed presidential primary bid, identifying a range of patterns that have important echoes in the 2020 Democratic primary today.