We have just learned that professors Benjamin Bishin and Nicholas Weller won the Bailey Award for best paper on LGBT politics presented at the 2022 APSA meeting. Congratulations to both of them!

The announcement from the caucus' website:

"The committee to select the Bailey Award (Calla Hummel, Matthew Incantalupo, and Thomas Hayes) has chosen “The Substantive Effects of Descriptive Representation: Gay and Lesbian Members of Congress are more Supportive of Gay Rights” by Benjamin Bishin and Nicholas Weller for this year’s Bailey Award for best paper on LGBT politics presented at the 2022 APSA meeting. The paper tackles a difficult question: does the underrepresentation of LGBT citizens influence the passage of policy protecting and advancing gay rights? This is an especially challenging question as only 18 openly LGB members have served in Congress since 2000. Using a data set that covers the period between 1997 to 2021, the authors use a broad measure of policy support for gay rights (HRC scores) and Coarsened Exact Matching (CSM) to compare districts represented by LGB representatives to similar districts represented by non-LGB representatives. The authors find a small, but significant difference in support for pro-LGB policy between LGB and non-LGB Democratic Members of Congress though the substantive difference is small due to the fact that the non-LGB Democrats are supportive of pro-LGB policy. The article was chosen for its methodological rigor and ability to tackle a difficult and important question."