It's the occupation, stupid! Explaining candidates' success in low-information local elections

Mario Mechtel

VfS Annual Conference 2011 (Frankfurt, Main): The Order of the World Economy - Lessons from the Crisis from Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association

Abstract: We analyze the effects of personal characteristics of 4239 political candidates on their performance in local elections in Germany. Our results show that a candidate's occupation plays a decisive role. Occupational effects can be explained by (a) an occupation's public reputation and (b) public renownedness of individuals carrying out certain occupations. The findings regarding the occupational reputation effects are strongly correlated with polls on occupational reputation/prestige in the US and Germany.

Keywords: low-information elections; local elections; occupational reputation; political economy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D70 D72 J01 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:vfsc11:48682

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