Seminar series Resemblance and discrimination in elections Add to calendar 2024-01-25 17:00 2024-01-25 18:30 Europe/Rome Resemblance and discrimination in elections Seminar Room 2, Badia Fiesolana Via dei Roccettini, 9 YYYY-MM-DD Print Share: Share on Facebook Share on BlueSky Share on X Share on LinkedIn Send by email Scheduled dates Jan 25 2024 17:00 - 18:30 CET Seminar Room 2, Badia Fiesolana, Via dei Roccettini, 9 Organised by Department of Political and Social Sciences In the context of the Comparative Politics Seminar Series, this sessions features a presentation by Raluca Pahontu (KCL). Discrimination affects hiring, mating, and voting decisions. Whilst discrimination in elections mainly relates to gender or race, we introduce a novel source of discrimination: candidate resemblance. When candidates’ partisanship is not known, voters select those that resemble most elected co-partisans. Using a machine learning algorithm for face comparison among white male legislators, we find a stronger resemblance effect for Republicans compared to Democrats in the US. This happens because Republicans have a higher within-party facial resemblance than Democrats, even when accounting for gender and race. We find a similar pattern in the UK, where Conservative MPs are more similar looking to each other than Labour. Using a survey experiment, we find that Tory voters reward resemblance, while there is no similar effect for Labour. The results are consistent with an interpretation of this behaviour as a form of statistical discrimination. Related events Read more Seminar series 21 Feb 2024 16:30 - 17:30 CET Online meeting , Zoom Seminar series Department of Political and Social Sciences Digital politics and foreign interventions Speakers: Ashrakat Elshehawy (Stanford University)
Read more Seminar series 21 Feb 2024 16:30 - 17:30 CET Online meeting , Zoom Seminar series Department of Political and Social Sciences Digital politics and foreign interventions Speakers: Ashrakat Elshehawy (Stanford University)