Abstract
Voters often rely on informational shortcuts, such as the background traits of politicians, to decide which candidates to support at the ballot box. One such background trait is family composition, particularly parental status. Research, however, has mostly overlooked whether the value-laden choices that politicians make regarding their families—like what neighborhoods they live in, where they worship, and what schools they send their children to—affect how constituents view them. We conduct a survey experiment in the U.S. that presents respondents with hypothetical biographies of politicians that randomly vary one of the most important decisions that politicians make regarding their families: whether to send them to public or private school. We find that: (1) voters are more inclined to vote for politicians with children in public school; and (2) this preference may be due to voters perceiving these politicians as both warmer and more committed to public services.
Highlights
Voters often turn to background traits of politicians—such as a candidate’s race, sex, education, or social status—as a heuristic to inform ballot box decisions.1 Research examines whether family composition, and especially parental status, matters to voters (Bell & Kaufmann, 2015; Campbell & Cowley, 2018; Deason et al, 2015; Elder & Greene, 2012; Stalsburg, 2010; Teele et al, 2018; Thomas & Bittner, 2017)
Are voters more likely to cast their ballot for politicians who send their children to public over private school? To answer this question, we fielded an original survey experiment conducted on a diverse national sample in the U.S that presented respondents with biographies of hypothetical politicians running for office
We show that voters prefer politicians who send their children to public over private school, and that this preference may be attributable to both their perceived warmth and commitment to public services
Summary
Voters often turn to background traits of politicians—such as a candidate’s race, sex, education, or social status—as a heuristic to inform ballot box decisions. Research examines whether family composition, and especially parental status, matters to voters (Bell & Kaufmann, 2015; Campbell & Cowley, 2018; Deason et al, 2015; Elder & Greene, 2012; Stalsburg, 2010; Teele et al, 2018; Thomas & Bittner, 2017). The fact that Joe Biden, for instance, rode the train home to Delaware nightly to be with his family during his more than three decades in the Senate rather than live in Washington was the subject of media interest, earning Biden the nickname “Amtrak Joe” (Bosman, 2008). In this piece, we probe one of the most important family choices that many politicians make: whether to send their children to public or private school. In the U.K., for instance, a Labor Party cabinet minister’s decision to enroll his child in a “private boarding school for pupils with special needs” led him to be lambasted by an MP within his own party for engaging in a “betrayal of the party’s principles” (Hunt, 2007)
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