Kandidierenden-Attraktivität und Wahlerfolg – Eine Untersuchung zu parteispezifischen Unterschieden in der Wirksamkeit der physischen Attraktivität von Direktkandidierenden bei den Bundestagswahlen 2005 bis 2021

The fact that higher physical attractiveness enhances the electoral prospects of politicians is by now uncontested in electoral research. Although there are plausible arguments for it, so far, no investigation has been conducted regarding the extent to which the party affiliation of candidates can influence the relationship between physical attractiveness and electoral success. This will be analyzed in this article for Germany. It explains how the physical attractiveness of candidates can influence their electoral chances and why it is expected that this influence should vary across parties. Based on a complete enumeration of all direct candidates in the federal elections from 2005 to 2021, whose physical attractiveness was independently assessed, linear regressions are estimated with the share of first and second votes obtained in the constituency as dependent variables. In line with the proposed hypotheses, a slightly stronger attractiveness effect is found on both the first vote and the second vote share for the (former) catch-all parties CDU/CSU and SPD, as opposed to the (relatively) smaller established parties Bündnis’90/Die Grünen, FDP, and Die Linke. However, the difference is smaller for the second vote share. No attractiveness effect can be identified for the populist AfD.