Does Candidate Quality Matter Anymore?

• In Event: Rethinking the Roles of Individual Candidates and Their Attributes

Abstract

In today’s politically polarized era, how much does candidate quality matter in elections? Spatial models predict that valence factors, such as candidate quality, matter less to voters as differences between the parties increase. In this paper I use a new measure of candidate quality – based on local newspaper endorsements of candidates – to estimate the effects of candidate quality over time and across office types, and benchmark these to incumbency effects. I show that candidate quality effects are similar in magnitude to incumbency effects, and that most of estimated incumbency effects are *not* explained by candidate quality per se (and vice versa). I also show that while incumbency effects peaked in the 1980s and slowly declined thereafter, coinciding with trends in political polarization, candidate quality effects gradually increase from the 1950s until 2010 despite significant polarization. In preliminary results, I also find that the importance of candidate quality has decline by about 50% in the most recent decade, and that the decrease in competitive elections over time – and particularly after 2010 – has reduced the share of elections where candidate quality effects can plausibly alter an election’s outcome. The results highlight the importance of electoral competition in producing high quality representatives.

Author

• Kevin DeLuca, Yale University