VOLUME 4, ISSUE 3, 2009 <Previous Next> Candidate Faces and Election Outcomes: Is the Face–Vote Correlation Caused by Candidate Selection? Matthew D. Atkinson Ryan D. Enos Seth J. Hill SUGGESTED CITATION: Matthew D. Atkinson, Ryan D. Enos and Seth J. Hill (2009) "Candidate Faces and Election Outcomes: Is the Face–Vote Correlation Caused by Candidate Selection?", Quarterly Journal of Political Science: Vol. 4:No 3, pp 229-249. http:/dx.doi.org/10.1561/100.00008062 Download this article Associated files: Replication Data Tell a Colleague Get Acrobat Reader Printing Tip: Select the option to 'print as image' in the Acrobat print dialog to ensure the article prints as it appears on screen. Learn more... We estimate the effect of candidate appearance on vote choice in congressional elections using an original survey instrument. Based on estimates of the facial competence of 972 congressional candidates, we show that in more competitive races the out-party tends to run candidates with higher quality faces. We estimate the direct effect of face on vote choice when controlling for the competitiveness of the contest and for individual partisanship. Combining survey data with our facial quality scores and a measure of contest competitiveness, we find a face quality effect for Senate challengers of about 4 points for independent voters and 1–3 points for partisans. While we estimate face effects that could potentially matter in close elections, we find that the challenging candidate’s face is never the difference between a challenger and incumbent victory in all 99 Senate elections in our study.

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