Elsevier

Journal of Public Economics

Volume 146, February 2017, Pages 79-86
Journal of Public Economics

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

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2016.12.008Get rights and content
Under a Creative Commons license
open access

Highlights

  • Politicians on the right look more beautiful in Europe, the U.S. and Australia.

  • As beautiful people earn more, they are more likely to oppose redistribution.

  • Voters use beauty as a cue for conservatism in low-information elections.

  • Politicians on the right benefit more from beauty in low-information elections.

Abstract

Since good-looking politicians win more votes, a beauty advantage for politicians on the left or on the right is bound to have political consequences. We show that politicians on the right look more beautiful in Europe, the United States and Australia. Our explanation is that beautiful people earn more, which makes them less inclined to support redistribution. Our model of within-party competition predicts that voters use beauty as a cue for conservatism when they do not know much about candidates and that politicians on the right benefit more from beauty in low-information elections. Evidence from real and experimental elections confirms both predictions.

JEL classification

D72
J45
J70

Keywords

Beauty
Elections
Political candidates
Appearance
Ideology
Parties

Cited by (0)

We thank the co-editor Brian Knight as well as Heléne Berg, Andreas Bernecker, Christian Bjørnskov, Massimo Bordignon, Mikael Elinder, Olle Folke, Silke Friedrich, David Furtunato, Edward Glaeser, Andreas Graefe, Veronica Grembi, Friedrich Heinemann, Juha Itkonen, Daniel Klein, Peter Kurrild-Klitgaard, Erik Lindqvist, Pierre-Guillaume Méon, Mattias Nordin, Christopher Olivola, Elisabeth Palvölgyi, Torsten Persson, Alexander Todorov, Andreas Wagener, two anonymous referees, seminar participants at Aarhus University, Frankfurt School of Finance & Management, George Mason University, Masaryk University, Princeton University, Université Libre de Bruxelles, University of Cambridge, University of Mannheim, and Uppsala University, participants at the EPCS, CESifo Public Economics, IIPF, MPSA, EEA, and PCS conferences for helpful comments and suggestions on an earlier version, Andrew Leigh and Alexander Todorov for providing data from Australia and the United States, Andreas Graefe for programming our surveys using MTurk, Eugen Dimant, Malin Olsson Tallås, Max Ostermayer and Thomas Wilhelmsson for excellent research assistance, and the Swedish Research Council (Berggren, grant No. 2103-734), the Torsten Söderberg Foundation (Berggren, grant No. E1/14), the Jan Wallander' and Tom Hedelius' Foundation (Jordahl, grant No. P2012-0130:1) and the Yrjö Jahnsson Foundation (Poutvaara, grant No. 5383) for financial support.