The Right Look: Conservative Politicians Look Better and Voters Reward It

Niclas Berggren, Henrik Jordahl and Panu Poutvaara

No 855, Working Paper Series from Research Institute of Industrial Economics

Abstract: Political candidates on the right are more beautiful or are seen as more competent than candidates on the left in Australia, Finland, France, and the United States. This appearance gap gives candidates on the right an advantage in elections, which could in turn influence policy outcomes. As an illustration, the Republican share of seats increased by an average of 6% in the 2000–2006 U.S. Senate elections because they fielded candidates who looked more competent. These shifts are big enough to have given the Republicans a Senate majority in two of the four Congresses in the studied time period. The Republicans also won nine of the 15 gubernatorial elections where looks were decisive. Using Finnish data, we also show that beauty is an asset for political candidates in intra-party competition and more so for candidates on the right in low-information elections. Our analysis indicates that this advantage arises since voters use good looks as a cue for conservatism when candidates are relatively unknown.

Keywords: Beauty; Elections; Political candidates; Appearance; Ideology; Parties (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 J45 J70 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2010-12-20, Revised 2012-02-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-pol
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published as Berggren, Niclas, Henrik Jordahl and Niclas Berggren, 'The Right Look: Conservative Politicians Look Better and Voters Reward It' in Journal of Public Economics, 2017, pages 79-86.

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Related works:
Journal Article: The right look: Conservative politicians look better and voters reward it (2017)
Working Paper: The right look: Conservative politicians look better and voters reward it (2017)
Working Paper: The Right Look: Conservative Politicians Look Better and Voters Reward It (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:0855

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