Why do voters elect less qualified candidates?

Voters sometimes vote for seemingly less-qualified candidates. To explain this fact, we develop a political agency model with sequential elections in which a voter elects a politician among candidates with different competence (valence) levels, considering that politicians’ representation of voters’...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of theoretical politics Vol. 34; no. 3; pp. 443 - 477
Main Authors Mizuno, Nobuhiro, Okazawa, Ryosuke
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London, England SAGE Publications 01.07.2022
Sage Publications Ltd
Subjects
Candidates
Competence
Elections
Politicians
Voter behavior
Voters
political agency
repeated elections
signaling
private information
Candidates’ competence
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Summary:Voters sometimes vote for seemingly less-qualified candidates. To explain this fact, we develop a political agency model with sequential elections in which a voter elects a politician among candidates with different competence (valence) levels, considering that politicians’ representation of voters’ preferences depends on their competence levels. We show that a negative relationship exists between politicians’ competence and their representation when a future challenger is likely to be incompetent and the reward for politicians is small. We also highlight voters’ private information on how they evaluate candidates’ competence, demonstrating that voters’ demand for incompetent candidates can be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
ISSN:0951-6298
1460-3667
DOI:10.1177/09516298221103143