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Resemblance and Discrimination in Elections
Article Abstract:
Discrimination affects hiring, mating, and voting decisions. While discrimination in elections mainly relates to gender or race, we introduce a novel source of discrimination: candidate resemblance. When candidates’ partisanship is not known, voters select those that resemble most elected co-partisans. Using a machine learning algorithm for face comparison among white male legislators, we find a stronger resemblance effect for Republicans compared to Democrats in the United States. This happens because Republicans have a higher within-party facial resemblance than Democrats, even when accounting for gender and race. We find a similar pattern in the UK, where Conservative members of Parliament are more similar looking to each other than Labour. Using a survey experiment, we find that Tory voters reward resemblance, while there is no similar effect for Labour. The results are consistent with an interpretation of this behavior as a form of statistical discrimination.
| Resemblance and Discrimination in Elections was authored by Raluca L. Pahontu and Stavros Poupakis. It was published by Chicago in JOP in 2025 est.. |
