TY - JOUR
T1 - Why Do Voters Prefer Local Candidates? Evidence from a Danish Conjoint Survey Experiment
AU - Nyholt, Niels
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2024.
PY - 2024/12
Y1 - 2024/12
N2 - Political candidates enjoy a well-documented electoral advantage near their place of residence. But knowing that voters prefer candidates who live nearby does not explain why this is the case. What inferences do voters make about local candidates that make them so universally attractive? In this study, I distinguish two well-established theoretical explanations in a conjoint experiment conducted in Denmark. Do people prefer local candidates because of in-group favoritism, or do voters prefer local candidates because they expect them to favor their local area once in office? By independently varying signals of candidates’ (1) behavioral localism and (2) symbolic localism, I estimate the importance of each for voters’ preferences for local candidates. I find that voters’ preference for candidates who live nearby is driven in part by a preference for candidates who spend most of their time looking out for voters’ local interests. While I also find that voters prefer candidates who signal their commitment to the local in-group, these preferences appear to be unrelated to voters’ preference for candidates who live locally. Thus, I find that voters seem to prefer local candidates because of their behavioral localism, while I find no evidence that voters prefer local candidates because of their symbolic localism.
AB - Political candidates enjoy a well-documented electoral advantage near their place of residence. But knowing that voters prefer candidates who live nearby does not explain why this is the case. What inferences do voters make about local candidates that make them so universally attractive? In this study, I distinguish two well-established theoretical explanations in a conjoint experiment conducted in Denmark. Do people prefer local candidates because of in-group favoritism, or do voters prefer local candidates because they expect them to favor their local area once in office? By independently varying signals of candidates’ (1) behavioral localism and (2) symbolic localism, I estimate the importance of each for voters’ preferences for local candidates. I find that voters’ preference for candidates who live nearby is driven in part by a preference for candidates who spend most of their time looking out for voters’ local interests. While I also find that voters prefer candidates who signal their commitment to the local in-group, these preferences appear to be unrelated to voters’ preference for candidates who live locally. Thus, I find that voters seem to prefer local candidates because of their behavioral localism, while I find no evidence that voters prefer local candidates because of their symbolic localism.
KW - Behavioral localism
KW - Friends-and-neighbors voting
KW - Local candidates
KW - Place-based social identity
KW - Symbolic localism
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85186423223&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s11109-024-09919-9
DO - 10.1007/s11109-024-09919-9
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:85186423223
SN - 0190-9320
VL - 46
SP - 2313
EP - 2332
JO - Political Behavior
JF - Political Behavior
IS - 4
ER -