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More political economy from Ilya Somin – this time examining why physically attractive candidates dominate politics:

Australian economists Amy King and Andrew Leigh have an interesting article showing that the perceived beauty of candidates has a major impact on eelctoral success [HT: Prawfsblawg]. By their analysis of data from Australian parliamentary elections, one standard deviation of candidate “beauty” (the difference between a candidate at the 84th percentile of attractiveness relative to other candidates and one at the 50th) increases a candidate’s percentage of the vote by 1.5 to 2 percent. This is a major effect, since about 10% of Australian legislators won their seats by less than that margin, during the period studied. Moreover, this data probably understates the true impact of physical attractiveness, because it looks only at the relative success of those politicians who get major party nominations; obviously, however, the parties themselves are aware of the importance of looks and thus will try to nominate good-looking candidates, thereby excluding some unattractive but potentially more competent alternatives.

Physical attractiveness influences electoral outcomes in the US as well as Australia. As the Prawfsblawg post linked above points out, taller candidates seem to have an edge in American presidential elections. A 2005 National Bureau of Economic Research study found that the relative physical attractiveness of rival candidates has a big impact on the vote to determine the president of the American Economics Association.

I. Physical Attractiveness and Rational Political Ignorance.

The impact of physical attractiveness on electoral success is another effect of voter ignorance and irrationality. Because individual votes have so little chance of actually affecting electoral outcomes, voters have little incentive either to acquire political knowledge (“rational ignorance”) or to do a good job of evaluating the information they have (“rational irrationality”). If voters know little about politics and public policy, they may rely on extremely limited information to make their decisions, including information about a candidate’s looks. King and Leigh predictably find that candidate looks had a bigger impact in constituencies with a higher percentage of “apathetic” voters, a trait that probably correlates with political ignorance. Irrationality, however, plays a role as well. Even if you know little about politics, voting on the basis of looks is still poor decision-making. After all, there is no reason to believe that physical attractiveness predicts better performance in office.

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