Political Behavior
Political candidates enjoy a well-documented electoral advantage near their place of residence. But knowing that voters prefer candidates who live nearby does not explain why this is the case. What inferences do voters make about local candidates that make them so universally attractive? In this study, I distinguish two well-established theoretical explanations in a conjoint experiment conducted in Denmark. Do people prefer local candidates because of in-group favoritism, or do voters prefer local candidates because they expect them to favor their local area once in office? By independently varying signals of candidates’ (1) behavioral localism and (2) symbolic localism, I estimate the importance of each for voters’ preferences for local candidates. I find that voters’ preference for candidates who live nearby is driven in part by a preference for candidates who spend most of their time looking out for voters’ local interests. While I also find that voters prefer candidates who signal their commitment to the local in-group, these preferences appear to be unrelated to voters’ preference for candidates who live locally. Thus, I find that voters seem to prefer local candidates because of their behavioral localism, while I find no evidence that voters prefer local candidates because of their symbolic localism.
European Journal of Political Research
Voters in rural and peripheral areas have increasingly turned away from mainstream parties and towards right-wing populist parties. This paper tests the extent to which political decisions with adverse local effects — such as school and hospital closures — can explain this electoral shift. I theorize that political decisions such as these substantiate a perception of a disconnect between “ordinary” people and the politicians in power in day-to-day experiences. Using data on 315 school closures and 30 hospital closures in Denmark from 2005 to 2019 in a generalized difference-in-differences design, I find that mayors lose about 1.6 percentage points of the valid votes in areas where they close a school. Furthermore, I find that right-wing populist parties increase their support in both local and national elections when a local school or hospital is closed. These findings provide insight into the electoral consequences of political decisions with adverse local effects and thus contribute to our understanding of the rise of right-wing populism.
Med Ulrik Kjær & Kasper Møller Hansen i Partiledernes kamp om midtentiledernes kamp om midten – Folketingsvalget 2022 (red. Kasper Møller Hansen & Rune Stubager)
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