The Personal Characteristics of Candidates in Municipal Elections and Their Effect on Election Results

Abstract

The article discusses the role of the personal characteristics of candidates in municipal elections as important factors infl uencing the candidates' election success. Voters lacking suffi cient or relevant information about the candidates and their political preferences can use knowledge of the candidates' personal characteristics as specifi c cues or shortcuts in their choice. On the other hand, the candidates' personal characteristics are the private resources they can use to infl uence the chance to getting elected. The article uses a logistic regression to analyse the impact of candidates' personal characteristics on their electoral success in Czech municipal elections. A list of all candidates in the elections was used, including information about their sociodemographic and political characteristics and their election results. First examined is how a candidate's ranking on the list of candidates can depend on his or her personal characteristics. Second, how a candidate's election success can depend on his or her position on the list of candidates and on his or her personal characteristics is analysed. The list of candidates for the 2010 elections was combined with lists of candidates for several previous elections in order to investigate the infl uence of incumbency. The results suggest that incumbency is the dominant independent factor explaining the election success of individual candidates, yet other characteristics, such as sex, education, age or membership in political parties are important as well. In small municipalities, the situation differs in some aspects from that in cities.