What makes a successful candidate? Political experience and low-information cues in elections
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Authors
Author (Corporation)
Publication date
2022
Typ of student thesis
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Type
01A - Journal article
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Parent work
The Journal of Politics
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DOI of the original publication
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Series
Series number
Volume
84
Issue / Number
4
Pages / Duration
2049-2063
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Publisher / Publishing institution
University of Chicago Press
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Abstract
It is well established that politically experienced candidates are electorally more successful than “novices.” However, methodological challenges have prevented scholars from establishing how much of this is attributable to voters who use political experience as a cue to infer competence. Further, information about political experience may decrease the weight voters place on other, less informative cues. In a natural quasi-experiment, I exploit the condition that—in the 2015 Swiss national elections—information about candidates’ political experience on party ballots varied approximately at random. In line with cue-based accounts, I show that political experience is most of an asset if it is mentioned on the ballot. Contrary to expectations, however, these cues do not crowd out group-membership cues such as those based on a candidate’s migration background. The results from two original candidate choice survey experiments, designed to measure causal processes, further corroborate these findings.
Keywords
cognitive shortcuts, immigrant-origin candidates, political experience, quality candidates, quasi-experiment, survey experiment, Switzerland, voter behavior
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ISBN
ISSN
1468-2508
0022-3816
0022-3816
Language
English
Created during FHNW affiliation
No
Strategic action fields FHNW
Publication status
Published
Review
Peer review of the complete publication
Open access category
Closed
License
Citation
Portmann, L. (2022). What makes a successful candidate? Political experience and low-information cues in elections. The Journal of Politics, 84(4), 2049–2063. https://doi.org/10.1086/719638