Powerful or warm? Liberal and conservative voters favor different traits in a politician

Several decades of research in political and electoral behaviour have concluded that a candidate’s personality matters when voters cast their ballots. Unsurprisingly, the main take-away from most of these studies is that voters tend to vote for candidates that they find appealing. However, existing research is still unclear about the specific types of candidate personalities and character traits voters find most appealing. In a recently published article, I build on the growing interest in the deep-seated psychological differences between liberal and conservative voters to argue that ideological orientation has a significant effect on which character traits voters prefer. CONT.

Lasse Laustsen (Aarhus U.), LSE USAPP