Physical Appearance and Elections: An Inequality Perspective

There seems to be a consensus that physically attractive candidates win elections more often. Unfortunately, very little is known about how voters evaluate candidates with socioeconomically (dis)advantageous “looks.” To bridge this gap, we study the electoral consequences of looking upper-class, middle-class, or working-class for candidates. Using official electoral data for the 2017 Finnish municipal elections and a novel dataset based on a representative sample of the Finnish population (N=7,920), we find that Finnish citizens systematically vote for candidates that look like they have upper-class occupations. Furthermore, the data strongly suggest that there exists a systematic electoral penalty, particularly for female candidates that look like they have working-class occupations.