Arbeitspapier

The right look: Conservative politicians look better and their voters reward it

Previous research has established that good-looking political candidates win more votes. We extend this line of research by examining differences between parties on the left and on the right of the political spectrum. Our study combines data on personal votes in real elections with a web survey in which 2,513 non-Finnish respondents evaluated the facial appearance of 1,357 Finnish political candidates. We find that political candidates on the right are better looking in both municipal and parliamentary elections and that they have a larger beauty premium in municipal, but not in parliamentary, elections. As municipal candidates are relatively unknown, the beauty-premium gap indicates that voters especially those to the right use beauty as a cue for candidate ideology or quality in the municipal elections.

Language
Englisch

Bibliographic citation
Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 5513

Classification
Wirtschaft
Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
Public Sector Labor Markets
Labor Discrimination: General
Subject
beauty
elections
political candidates
appearance
ideology
parties
Wahlkampf
Politiker
Wahlverhalten
Ideologie
Public Choice
Finnland

Event
Geistige Schöpfung
(who)
Berggren, Niclas
Jordahl, Henrik
Poutvaara, Panu
Event
Veröffentlichung
(who)
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)
(where)
Bonn
(when)
2011

Handle
URN
urn:nbn:de:101:1-201104113865
Last update
10.03.2025, 11:42 AM CET

Data provider

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Object type

  • Arbeitspapier

Associated

  • Berggren, Niclas
  • Jordahl, Henrik
  • Poutvaara, Panu
  • Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)

Time of origin

  • 2011

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