Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/51690 
Year of Publication: 
2011
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 5513
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
Previous research has established that good-looking political candidates win more votes. We extend this line of research by examining differences between parties on the left and on the right of the political spectrum. Our study combines data on personal votes in real elections with a web survey in which 2,513 non-Finnish respondents evaluated the facial appearance of 1,357 Finnish political candidates. We find that political candidates on the right are better looking in both municipal and parliamentary elections and that they have a larger beauty premium in municipal, but not in parliamentary, elections. As municipal candidates are relatively unknown, the beauty-premium gap indicates that voters especially those to the right use beauty as a cue for candidate ideology or quality in the municipal elections.
Subjects: 
beauty
elections
political candidates
appearance
ideology
parties
JEL: 
D72
J45
J70
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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