Den personlige faktor: Højre- og venstreorienterede vælgere foretrækker forskellige kandidatpersonligheder

Resumé

Candidates and party leaders are often believed to play a minor role in the party-centered Danish elections. In this article, I argue that this nding could be due to methodological as well as theoretical inadequacies. Methodologically, candidate personality needs to be disentangled from the candidates’ political positions and party a liation. eoretically, the literature on candidate personality needs to investigate the role played by ideology. Drawing on recent insights on the fundamental di erences between individuals on the ideological left and right, I argue that rightwing voters will prefer a dominant candidate personality, while their leftwing counterparts will prefer an agreeable candidate personality. e prediction is supported in an experimental study conducted on Danish student subjects. e ndings demonstrate that rightwing voters evaluate a domi- nant candidate personality more positively than leftwing voters. On the contrary, leftwing voters evaluate an agreeable candidate personality more positively than rightwing voters. e nding suggests that di erent voters prefer di erent types of candidates and that no universal winning candidate personality exists.