Abstract Parliaments at all levels of government do not necessarily resemble the society they represent. Such parliaments are generally more masculine, less diverse in terms of ethnicity and region, and older than the population. Focusing on youth’s underrepresentation, we are interested in why young people do not get elected. Using the German local elections as a case and looking at a random sample of 100 German municipal elections comprising more than 6400 candidates, we find that youth’s underrepresentation stems to a large degree from their underrepresentation in the candidate pool. In addition, we also discover that youth face some disadvantages in the electoral process. However, these disadvantages are subtle, in that parties are less likely to put young candidates on the top and most electorally advantaged list positions. Voters, in turn, do not generally vote less for young candidates, but they vote less for them if youth occupy a top list position.
Stockemer et al. (Tue,) studied this question.