TY - RPRT AU - Berggren, Niclas AU - Jordahl, Henrik AU - Poutvaara, Panu TI - The Right Look: Conservative Politicians Look Better and Their Voters Reward It PY - 2011/Feb/ PB - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) CY - Bonn T2 - IZA Discussion Paper IS - 5513 UR - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp5513 AB - Previous research has established that good-looking political candidates win more votes. We extend this line of research by examining differences between parties on the left and on the right of the political spectrum. Our study combines data on personal votes in real elections with a web survey in which 2,513 non-Finnish respondents evaluated the facial appearance of 1,357 Finnish political candidates. We find that political candidates on the right are better looking in both municipal and parliamentary elections and that they have a larger beauty premium in municipal, but not in parliamentary, elections. As municipal candidates are relatively unknown, the beauty-premium gap indicates that voters – especially those to the right – use beauty as a cue for candidate ideology or quality in the municipal elections. KW - ideology KW - appearance KW - political candidates KW - elections KW - beauty KW - parties ER -