Political Behaviour Part 3: Candidates

In this third (first and second here) and final post, we switch attention to the candidate rather than the voter. Although candidates are arguably less important in the UK than in the US, evidence from other countries may still be able to tell us something useful about whether politicians matter and how persuasive they are.

Much is made of the appearance of political candidates, what attributes we perceive them to have, whether they appear to be statesmanlike or prime ministerial and whether we deem them competent. It’s easy to dismiss these elements of political discourse as superficial but, like it or not, they probably matter. 

Neuroscientific studies suggest that response in a specific part of the brain to seeing a picture of a candidate is associated with a greater likelihood of that candidate losing the election. There is also good evidence to suggest that instant judgements of competence based on facial appearance alone predict electoral success regardless of whether adults or children are making predictions. It probably doesn't hurt candidates vote-winning prospects if they happen to be good looking too.

The question is whether the attributions we make based on candidate appearance actually matter. In US Senate elections the difference between below average and above average facial quality in a challenger increases the probability of voting for the challenger among both partisan and independent voters. Having said that, in this study at least, facial quality was never the decisive feature in either a challenger or incumbent victory. While appearance matters the extent to which it matters may differ depending on audience. Those that are less knowledgeable about politics may be particularly likely to be influenced by candidate appearance especially when a candidate has sufficient television exposure.

It would certainly seem to be the case that politicians can influence voters from a distance merely through how they look but what about more direct forms of contact? One of the prevailing themes from the voter turnout literature is that when it comes to mobilisation, more personal = more effective but is this also true for candidate persuasiveness? 

It would seem so. Experimental evidence suggests that politicians can substantially shape public opinion through direct communication, in this case mail. Even when politicians sent constituents official communications, adopting positions that those constituents opposed with little justification, constituents often adopted the politician’s stated position. This is a nice example of ‘substantive’ persuasion i.e. changing attitudes to, and positions on, policy issues. But what about other forms of persuasion important to politicians? Again, good evidence suggests that, just by holding online town halls – a virtual meetup between politicians and citizens -  political leaders are able not only to persuade substantively, that is with regard to policy, but also in terms of citizen attitudes towards candidates, and ultimately in terms of voting behaviour and eventual candidate choice.

It would seem that more personal = more effective is probably a good rule of thumb when it comes to political persuasion of various forms. However, as voters, we should probably exercise a degree of caution in making snap judgments about candidates.

While we often vote for politicians who we see as being similar to us it’s not clear that those we judge similar to us are actually that similar.  For example, one might infer that politicians from less privileged backgrounds will be more economically progressive. This mental short-cut – coined the mill worker’s son heuristic – has been demonstrated to effect voters in the US regardless of existing political knowledge. Unfortunately, this mental shortcut leads voters to make faulty inferences as politicians from less privileged backgrounds do not stand out as progressives when it comes to their actual voting record. It may not be the case that the politician you deem most like you – or even the one you would most happily go to the pub with – is the one that will do what you want them to do in office.

Of course, in some instances, politicians don’t need to do too much persuasive work. Some parts of the population already think that certain candidates are great and are quite keen to persuade others of their position, maybe using hashtags like #milifandom.