King's College London

At a job interview, a presentation at work, or even a first date, how you present yourself can play a significant role in achieving success.

When it comes to elections, however, a new academic study has suggested first impressions may be vital, and especially so for candidates on the political right.

Dr Raluca Pahontu, of King’s College London, and Dr Stavros Poupakis, from Brunel University of London, harnessed the power of facial recognition software to design an experiment that tested whether people were able to identify Conservative and Labour parliamentarians and whether that affected how likely people were to vote for them.

The researchers firstly collected official photos of all white male Labour and Conservative Members of Parliament from the House of Commons website and tasked the facial recognition software with ranking them by similarity.

The MPs were then ranked according to facial similarity, as judged by the software, and presented to would-be voters as part of a survey.

The researchers found that, in the survey, Conservative voters were 16 percentage points more likely to identify the most similar-looking Conservative MP than the least similar one. Labour supporters, meanwhile, were just as likely to identify the least similar Tory as they were to identify the most similar Tory.

The results also showed the most similar looking Labour candidate was not more likely to be identified than the least similar looking Labour candidate, and this was true for both Labour and Conservative voters, suggesting a higher degree of similarity in the way right-wing candidates look relative to eachother than those on the left.

The survey then asked test participants who they would be more likely to vote for and Conservative voters were 21 percentage points more likely to vote for the most-similar looking Conservative candidate than the least-similar looking.

By contrast, Labour voters were no more likely to vote for the most-similar looking Labour candidate than the least similar.

The researchers said: “Our paper shows that voters discriminate statistically between candidates based on their resemblance to known party members. Using facial similarity as a cue, we argue that voters project partisanship to an unknown candidate when they resemble an elected colleague.

“In line with previous research, we confirm this effect is stronger for right-wing candidates. We argue that happens because right-wing candidates resemble more one another, making it easier for voters, in particular right-wing, to identify the political leanings of the unknown candidates based on resemblance to known colleagues and select that candidate.”

As part of the study, published in the Journal of Politics, the researchers also obtained all photos of male candidates for elections to the House of Representatives in the United States between 2005 – 2021 and put them through facial recognition software.

Their results determined that Republicans were more similar to each other than Democrats.