Something to Run for: Stated Motives as Indicators of Candidate Emergence

Abstract

Patterns in candidate emergence affect who voters can choose from, and thus the quality of representative democracy. Despite extensive work considering factors that contribute to political ambition and factors that contribute to candidate emergence separately, we know less about the transition from the former to the latter. We investigate the role of motives using a novel dataset of over 10,000 open-ended statements of interest collected by Run for Something, a progressive non-profit that encourages political amateurs to run for state and local office. We find that politically ambitious future candidates talk about their interest in running differently than politically ambitious future non-candidates, suggesting that stated motives provide meaningful signals of likely candidate emergence. Respondents who articulated their motives in terms of general political interest, core values, and personal background were less likely to run than respondents who emphasized specific issues, political opportunity, or progressive populist sentiments, respectively. We further find that white and male respondents were likelier to articulate their interest in terms negatively associated with candidate emergence, consistent with prior work showing that members of underrepresented groups wait longer, until they are more qualified, before expressing their interest in running for office.