How Party Delegate Experience Shapes Candidate Selection Preferences

Party elites play a pivotal role in shaping parliamentary composition, yet their candidate preferences remain poorly understood. This study uses data from a conjoint experiment involving party delegates selecting candidates for five German parties across three state elections.

Candidate Selection Process

Delegates selected hypothetical candidates based on specific attributes.

Our analyses reveal two key findings:

• Delegates consistently preferred high-quality and socio-demographically similar candidates to their own members.
• Experienced delegates placed significantly more emphasis on valence (electability) attributes than inexperienced ones.

These results demonstrate that selector backgrounds influence candidate selection, offering crucial insights for understanding long-term policy implications.