How Do Voters Evaluate the Age of Candidates?

• In Event: Voting with All Five Senses

Abstract

What role does a candidate’s age play in the decision-making process of voters? We know from past studies that voters rely on a variety of information shortcuts and heuristics when evaluating candidates, from those more directly connected to politics to characteristics such as a candidate’s appearance and gender. Do voters similarly infer certain qualities, traits, and issue positions of candidates based on their age? If so, how? And if the age of candidates matters, does it have a substantially large effect on voter evaluations of candidates, or are the effects relatively small?

In this paper, we address these questions using a survey experiment in Japan where we ask respondents to evaluate the photographs of hypothetical candidates for mayor, and then experimentally manipulate whether respondents are shown the image of a younger or older-looking candidate. Our innovation compared to past studies on gender and appearance is that rather than randomly showing photos of different people, we present respondents with photos of the same person, but use computer software to alter the faces of candidates to make them appear as if they are younger or older. By taking advantage of recent advances in machine learning and neural networks, we are able to hold constant elements of each photo unrelated to aging—including the expression and general facial characteristics of candidates—and alter only those elements that tend to change with age. After presenting the candidate photos, we then ask respondents to assess the candidate’s favorability, traits, and issue positions, as well as whether the respondent would likely turn out and vote for this candidate if they appeared on the ballot.

We have three main goals with this paper: (i) to investigate whether voters hold certain stereotypes with regard to younger and older candidates; (ii) to better understand the role of age in vote choice; and (iii) to test whether respondents are more likely to turn out to vote when someone closer to themselves in age is on the ballot—a question that is especially important for younger people given their low voter turnout and under-representation in most political institutions.

Authors

• Charles McClean, University of Michigan

• Yoshikuni Ono, Waseda University