Identifying voter preferences for politicians’ personal attributes: a conjoint experiment in Japan

Abstract

Although politicians’ personal attributes are an important component of elections and representation, few studies have rigorously investigated which attributes are most relevant in shaping voters’ preferences for politicians, or whether these preferences vary across different electoral system contexts. We investigate these questions with a conjoint survey experiment using the case of Japan’s mixed-member bicameral system. We find that the attributes preferred by voters are not entirely consistent with the observed attributes of actual politicians. Moreover, voters’ preferences do not vary when asked to consider representation under different electoral system contexts, whereas the observed attributes of politicians do vary across these contexts. These findings point to the role of factors beyond voters’ sincere preferences, such as parties’ recruitment strategies, the effect of electoral rules on the salience of the personal vote, and the availability of different types of politicians, in determining the nature of representation.

Party Elites’ Preferences in Candidates: Evidence from a Conjoint Experiment

“…Accordingly, a range of recent studies employ candidate choice experiments in which voters are asked to evaluate hypothetical candidates running either in legislative (e.g., Ono and Burden 2019; Franchino and Zucchini 2015; Carnes and Lupu 2016) or presidential elections (e.g., . These studies find that voters have significant preferences over gender (e.g., Ono and Burden 2019), age (e.g., Horiuchi et al 2018), occupational background (e.g., Carnes and Lupu 2016) and other valence related attributes of candidates (e.g., Franchino and Zucchini 2015). Focusing on voter preferences for candidates that stand to represent them in office is undoubtedly of great relevance.…”

Student Attitudes Toward Campus Diversity at the U.S. Naval Academy: Evidence From Conjoint Survey Experiments

“…More recently, Hainmueller et al (2014) integrated conjoint analysis with the potential-outcome framework for causal inference, causing a growth in its application. As a result, political scientists have adopted it to measure preferences for politicians (e.g., Carlson, 2015; Horiuchi, Smith, & Yamamoto, in press), policies (e.g., Bechtel & Scheve, 2013; Horiuchi, Smith, & Yamamoto, 2018), and politicized issues such as immigration (e.g., Hainmueller & Hopkins, 2015).…”

Gerontocracy in a comparative perspective: Explaining why political leaders are (almost always) older than their constituents

“…For one thing, voters appear to dislike candidates who lack political experience. Findings from observational studies (Hobolt & Hoyland, 2011) and survey experiments (Coffé & Theiss‐Morse, 2016; Kirkland & Coppock, 2018; see also: Horiuchi, Smith, & Yamamoto, 2020; Teele et al, 2018) consistently show that voters reward candidates who previously held political offices. Interestingly, these studies also find that voters, while exhibiting a preference for a correlate of old age (namely, experience), are not particularly attracted to old politicians per se.…”