You have said that outside of the fundamentals the biggest variable in an election is the quality of the candidate. What qualities make a candidate a good one?And Colby asks:
[D]o we have any evidence that "authenticity" is really important electorally?The big thing here is that it depends a lot on which types of elections we're talking about. In general elections for president, the candidates almost certainly don't matter very much at all. There's some evidence that ideological extremism (Goldwater, McGovern) is punished, although even then not by large amounts. Beyond that, anything is going to be very small. Of course, at least in modern times it's hard to measure this because no one makes it that far without having won a nomination fight in which large electorates are involved...we don't really know how a truly inept presidential nominee would do.
In presidential nomination contests -- in all primary elections -- candidates of course are much more important. There are other things that can matter...some of it depends on how you conceptualize "candidate" as a variable. That is, people may vote by faction, ethnicity, or geographic region; a candidate may be a cue to those things.
Congressional (general) elections are where the academic literature talks about candidate quality a lot. Obviously, party matters there quite a bit. But because there sometimes is a very large gap in candidate quality (unlike, say, presidential general elections), it turns out that it matters: challengers with previous experience in elective office do much better than do those without such experience. Quality challengers will (all else equal) raise much more money and run professional campaigns, thereby closing the gap in name recognition and other factors that drive vote. What's less clear (and I'm not fully up to date on the literature, so maybe someone will jump in) is exactly why experienced candidates do better -- it could be that they have learned how to campaign, or it could be that it's easier to amass electioneering resources if more people think that you'll be a strong candidate (even if you actually are no better than some first-timer).
To turn to the question of particular traits such as "authenticity" -- I think you can see the circumstances where anything about the candidate can matter. Out of that, image is only one of many possibly relevant candidate traits. Out of image, authenticity is only one aspect. So it's not impossible at all that such things can matter...but almost every time you hear that it did, it's just a post-facto rationalization, as are most -- but again, not all -- discussions of campaign effects. If it's going to matter, though, I'd say that high-information primary elections would be the place to look.
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"What's less clear (and I'm not fully up to date on the literature, so maybe someone will jump in) is exactly why experienced candidates do better -- it could be that they have learned how to campaign, or it could be that it's easier to amass electioneering resources if more people think that you'll be a strong candidate (even if you actually are no better than some first-timer)."
ReplyDeleteDon't know what "the literature" says, but I'd say the explanation goes something like this:
(1) First time candidates will include both dedicated, ambitious, and intelligent candidates (i.e., "real candidates") and those who are not; (2) while even real candidates will find it difficult to win in the first race (for numerous reasons -- name recognition, unlikely to be in very competitive race if first time candidate, etc.), they are much more likely not to embarrass themselves and therefore choose to run again.
Therefore, "experienced candidates" are much more likely to be "real candidates" regardless of what they "learned" while campaigning the first time.
In other words, by self-selection, experienced candidates are necessarily better than first timers.
Jon,
ReplyDeleteThere's also the Krasno (and fellow traveler) contributions to the idea of quality. Jacobson's rough and dirty measure (previous elective office) is just the easiest way to collect it; Jacobson doesn't pretend its much more than a proxy. It isn't that there's too much magical about having won before; there's a little of that and a little of the gravitas that the previous job imparts. But, there's also name recognition, fundraising ability (meant to include both skills picked up, reasons for people to contribute to them, and viability in an election to make potential contributors more likely to contribute), and skills they pick up (completely ignoring institutional advantages like franking and everything else).
But there is also the explanation BBS offers: it's a latent variable, and winning before measures it. That's also a perfectly good explanation...that, in essence, using previous electoral victories is simply cheating using a proxy measure of the DV.
Sure -- it's just that it's very possible that one or more of these explanations could be where the bulk of the effect is found, and it's an empirical question, but one that as far as I know no one has really untangled. I am a fan of the Krasno & Green approach, but my impression is that while it's conceptually stronger to use a nuanced indicator of candidate quality than to use Jacobson's blunt version, in the event it doesn't really buy much.
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