Designing the perfect politician

In choosing who to vote for at an election, which candidate characteristics are most desirable to the electorate? This was the question Joe Twyman, director of political and social research at YouGov, and University of Nottingham professor Phillip Cowley sought to answer.

“Philip’s idea was to check different characteristics by changing attributes within the candidate biographies,” explained Twyman in his MRS Conference presentation.

“We tested four questions: Which is the most approachable candidate? Who is the most experienced? Who is the most effective? And lastly, and perhaps most importantly, who would you prefer as an MP?”

Twyman and Cowley discovered that female candidates – all other things being equal – tend to score much higher for approachability and lower for experience, but these differences in perception do not translate into a difference in preference.

“We’ve known this for a long time: what I wanted to do was repeat this with different characteristics to see the relative importance of each,” said Cowley. “Religion we found had almost no effect; age had some effect.”

It seems too much education can also hurt a politician’s chances of winning. “The British like uneducated candidates,” Cowley said, with 18 seeming to be the optimum age to leave education.

The characteristics that made the biggest differences to voting preferences were occupation and “localness”.Twyman and Cowley said the public could be put off by the idea of a professional politician even if they recognised the experience that came with it. On the other hand, they like the idea of a candidate who is a GP – though quite how that squares with a dislike of well-educated candidates is anyone’s guess.

But GP or not, being a local candidate is was what matters most.

Guest post by Alastair Heggie