Why Voters Prefer Highly Educated Candidates: Drivers of Unequal Representation

• In Event: The Class Backgrounds of Elected Representatives

Abstract

Political candidates with lower levels of educational attainment are less likely to get elected. This is part of a larger pattern where some socio-demographic groups are substantially underrepresented in political office, which poses a challenge to democratic legitimacy and representation. We show that this electoral disadvantage occurs even though lower-educated voters -- just like higher-educated voters -- prefer same-group candidates, and we present innovative experimental evidence on the causal mechanisms underlying these preferences. Voters use education as a heuristic for whether a candidate's policies will favor their own group, and they infer candidate competence and warmth from education information. When information about these factors is provided, lower-educated voters no longer exhibit same-group preferences, whereas the initially large education premium among higher-educated voters is only halved. The findings advance our understanding of the cognitive mechanisms at play when voters process information about political candidates and challenge existing work stating that education-based electoral discrimination only favors highly educated candidates. Our findings suggest that providing detailed information about candidates reduces ingroup bias, and that lack of supply of lower-educated candidates may keep lower-educated voters from getting the office-holders they actually prefer.

Authors

• Mathias Kruse, Aarhus University

• Andreas Videbæk Jensen, Aarhus University