Candidate Selection and the Challenges of Representation in Changing Societies

• In Event: Pre-Electoral Choices and Post-Election Consequences

Abstract

Partisan re-alignment and de-alignment in Europe has been an important trend in advanced democracies. The rise of the populist right and other non-mainstream options has increased the saliency of this area of study. In recent years, the class gradient in voting has all but disappeared in several Western European and North American countries, meaning that low income voters in these countries are now no more likely to vote for mainstream parties of the center-left than they are to vote for the center-right. Survey evidence suggests that these voters are overwhelmingly dissatisfied with the mainstream options available to them, choosing to either sit elections out or vote for radical alternatives on the far-left or far-right. Why are these voters so dissatisfied? Using a unique dataset covering the class background of parliamentary candidates in the United Kingdom from the 1970s until today, I show that even as descriptive representation for other types of voters has increased, the descriptive representation of low income voters has precipitously declined. I use district level demographic data to show that this decline cannot be explained by simple demographic change, and instead is likely the result of strategic decisions by the political parties and changes in patterns of low income integration into the electoral politics. I argue that any explanation of the increased partisan disaffection among low-income voters must take into account these changes in descriptive representation, as these voters no longer are represented by politicians who look and sound like them.

Author

• Will Horne, Princeton University