Do parties face an electoral penalty when they nominate candidates of colour? We employ a regression discontinuity design using state legislative election data from 2018, 2019, and 2020 to isolate the effect of nominating a candidate of colour on a party's general election performance. Utilising this approach with real-world data heightens external validity relative to existing racial penalty studies, largely supported by surveys and experiments. We find no evidence that candidates of colour are disadvantaged in state legislative general elections relative to narrowly nominated white candidates from the same party. These findings challenge the leading explanations for the underrepresentation of racial/ethnic minority groups, with implications for candidate selection across the United States.

Are young people less likely to punish undemocratic behaviour? I employ experimental data from five studies, ten countries, and seventeen unique country-year samples to reassess the proposition that young people are less committed to democracy than older people. The studies consist of four conjoint and one vignette experiments, which permit estimating an interaction between undemocratic candidate behaviour and respondent age on voting intentions. I find the interaction between undemocratic behaviour and age is negative – such that punishment of undemocratic behaviour increases with age – in all studies and almost all country samples. Moreover, the interaction is approximately linear and statistically significant in the pooled sample and most studies. Thus, young people are less likely to sanction undemocratic behaviour than older people. This letter contributes with the hitherto most comprehensive empirical contribution on age differences in commitment to democracy judging from punishment of undemocratic behaviour.