FPTP is ugly

We’re shafted several times over by our first-past-the-post electoral system. Let me count the ways: it’s unrepresentative, it occludes choice, it wastes a majority of votes, it under-represents women (with interesting second-order effects on corruption). It gave us Tony bloody Blair.

And according to this recent study from the Ratio Institute in Stockholm, it also hands us uglier politicians. Their findings, based on field research using photos of 1900 Finnish candidates:

Is there a political “beauty premium”, such that better looking candidates have a higher chance of becoming elected to public office?… in real elections, when candidates are chosen in competition with others on the same party list, beauty is more strongly correlated with success than [competence and trustworthiness] … candidates who are more beautiful than their list competitors receive higher vote shares.

But, alas, the political beauty premium only appears in proportional multi-member systems like Finland, or majoritarian systems with primaries (like the US). It only works with open rather than closed party lists, too.

On the plus side, this suggests our current masters’ dabblings on the vacuous side may prove counter-productive. Don’t they realise us FPTPers want issues, dammit, not pretty faces. Until we get the Fair Vote, anyway.