Candidate Authenticity: ‘To Thine Own Self Be True’

Abstract

In recent electoral contests, political observers and media outlets increasingly report on the level of "authenticity" of political candidates. However, even though this term has become commonplace in political commentary, it has received little attention in empirical electoral research. In this study, we identify the characteristics that we argue make a politician "authentic". After theoretically discussing the different dimensions of this trait, we propose a survey battery aimed at measuring perceptions of the authenticity of political candidates.Testing our measure using data sets from different countries, we show that the answers to our items load on one latent concept that we call "authenticity". Furthermore, perceptions of candidate authenticity seem to correlate strongly with evaluations of political parties and leaders, and with vote intention, while they are empirically distinguishable from other traits.We conclude that candidate authenticity is an important trait that should be taken into account by future research.

Political Authenticity: Conceptualization of a Popular Term

“…The proposed conceptualization can assist further research which examines perceived political authenticity as media effects and investigates the consequences of intersubjective differences in authenticity perceptions. Specifically, research should focus on the significance of perceived authenticity or inauthenticity and its antecedents in the context of people's voting decisions (Stiers et al 2019). In this way, the concept can be linked to other lines of research and contribute to questions concerning candidate preferences and the legitimacy of leadership (Iversen 2018).…”

“…Many scholars nonetheless agree that authenticity can be understood as a social construct encompassing the degree to which someone is and remains true to himself or herself (Gaden and Dumitrica 2015;Liu et al 2015;Umbach and Humphrey 2018). This allows to distinguish authenticity from related but different concepts like sincerity and integrity (Stiers et al 2019). While sincerity refers to politicians' accurate presentation of general beliefs to others, authenticity in a narrower sense is about politicians' accurate presentation of beliefs that define their own self (Jones 2016).…”

“…If people like a given politician, if they are members of the same party or have the same ideology, they are more likely to perceive him or her as authentic (Becker 2018;Brewer et al 2014;Pillow et al 2018;Rosenblum et al 2020). Despite these individual differences in perceptions of politicians' authenticity, political authenticity is still generally mentioned by people from different national contexts as an important factor in their voting decisions (Enli and Rosenberg 2018;Stiers et al 2019).…”

Do We Know Politicians’ True Selves From the Media? Exploring the Relationship Between Political Media Exposure and Perceived Political Authenticity

“…Communication scholars consider the use of social media in political campaigns and the everyday communication of politicians and political parties to be important drivers of personalized politics Metz et al, 2020). More personalized political communication adapts to the media logic and, together with the news media's focus on individual politicians and their personalities, contributes to the growing role of candidates and their traits in public discourse and as relevant criteria for political decisions (Balmas & Sheafer, 2010).A specific candidate trait that has recently received considerable attention is the authenticity of politicians (Gaden & Dumitrica, 2015;Jones, 2016;Stiers et al, 2021). Political commentaries depict political elections as "authenticity elections" (Shane, 2018, p. 2) or reduce election campaigns to "battle[s] for authenticity" (Moore, 2017), whereas scholars consider authenticity as "an increasingly important criterion by which citizens judge politicians" (Valgarðsson et al, 2021, p. 859) and as "the best way of winning votes" (Gaden &…”

The Good Politician and Political Trust: An Authenticity Gap in British Politics?

“…More specifically, we might think of authentic politicians as those who act genuinely like their true selves and like normal people, rather than in accordance with what is convenient and expected of them by the political context and by external pressures such as the media, campaign experts and political strategy. This trait has received little attention in empirical research in political science, however (Stiers et al, 2019).…”