What personality traits do citizens want politicians to have? Observational and experimental evidence of citizens' preferences in three countries

Abstract

Politicians' personality is believed to play a central role in their electoral success. It is unclear, however, how important different traits are to voters and how the impact of personality compares to that of other well-studied individual characteristics of politicians, such as gender, age, and political experience. Drawing on evidence from three studies—an observational study (N = 4543), a survey experiment (N = 1031), and a preregistered conjoint experiment (N = 4313)—conducted in Belgium, Canada, and Israel, we demonstrate that citizens value some traits (e.g., conscientiousness) more than others (e.g., extraversion) when choosing candidates. We also show that the relative effect of politicians' personality is greater than that of other individual characteristics. These results highlight the central role of elite personality in our understanding of voting behavior.