Keeping Workers off the Ballot: Survey Evidence from the Americas

• In Event: The Class Backgrounds of Elected Representatives

Abstract

Why do so few working-class people go on to hold elected office in the world's democracies? This paper uses more than 20 surveys conducted in the Americas between 2018 and 2023 to test three hypotheses, namely, that working-class people are less interested in holding office (nascent ambition), face greater personal precarity (resources), and receive less encouragement from political elites (recruitment). Across a variety of national contexts, we find no evidence that qualified working-class people are less likely to want to hold office and strong evidence that they are less likely to be encouraged to run and more often face personal hardships that discourage political candidacy. These findings suggest that working-class people are discouraged from running by their relative precarity and that party leaders and interest groups are unlikely to do much to offset these obstacles.

Authors

• Nicholas Carnes, Duke University

• Noam Lupu, Vanderbilt University