How voters assess elite-educated politicians: A survey experiment. (December 2018)
- Record Type:
- Journal Article
- Title:
- How voters assess elite-educated politicians: A survey experiment. (December 2018)
- Main Title:
- How voters assess elite-educated politicians: A survey experiment
- Authors:
- Gift, Thomas
Lastra-Anadón, Carlos X. - Abstract:
- Abstract: Are politicians with elite backgrounds more electable? In this article, we test whether being an elite is a net positive or negative in running for public office via an original survey experiment that manipulates one of the most salient indicators of eliteness in American life: university education. We find that liberals, but not conservatives, perceive politicians who attended elite schools to be more competent. Meanwhile, conservatives, but not liberals, perceive politicians who attended elite schools to be less relatable. On average, citizens are mildly, but not significantly, less inclined to vote for elite-educated politicians. By embedding treatments in our survey for whether politicians came from advantaged or disadvantaged upbringings, we also confirm that our results do not entirely reflect generic attitudes toward economically privileged candidates.
- Is Part Of:
- Electoral studies. Volume 56(2018)
- Journal:
- Electoral studies
- Issue:
- Volume 56(2018)
- Issue Display:
- Volume 56, Issue 2018 (2018)
- Year:
- 2018
- Volume:
- 56
- Issue:
- 2018
- Issue Sort Value:
- 2018-0056-2018-0000
- Page Start:
- 136
- Page End:
- 149
- Publication Date:
- 2018-12
- Subjects:
- Elites -- Universities -- Education -- Candidates -- Politicians -- Elections -- Experiment
Elections -- Periodicals
Voting -- Periodicals
324.6 - Journal URLs:
- http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/02613794/ ↗
http://www.elsevier.com/journals ↗ - DOI:
- 10.1016/j.electstud.2018.09.004 ↗
- Languages:
- English
- ISSNs:
- 0261-3794
- Deposit Type:
- Legaldeposit
- View Content:
- Available online (eLD content is only available in our Reading Rooms) ↗
- Physical Locations:
- British Library DSC - 3670.890000
British Library DSC - BLDSS-3PM
British Library HMNTS - ELD Digital store - Ingest File:
- 11701.xml