What kind of politicians are there

This system helps to ensure that a wider range of political parties is elected in accordance with their share of the vote. It also enables multiple Senators to be elected in each state. A quota is determined by dividing the total number of votes by one more than the number of candidates, then adding one. For example, if the total number of votes in a state is 1. If a candidate receives more than this number of votes, each additional vote will be distributed in accordance with the preferences of that particular voter.

If all six positions have not been filled by candidates who obtained quotas in the first round of counting, the least successful candidate will be eliminated and the votes received by that candidate will be distributed according to the preferences of those who voted for the candidate. This process will continue until all Senate positions have been filled by candidates achieving quotas. The use of proportional representation means that the Senate arguably achieves a more accurate representation of the Australian community.

The Senate has both a greater percentage of women, and a greater percentage of younger people than the House of Representatives. Proportional representation also makes it easier for independent and minor party candidates to be elected to the Senate. Find out more about how Senators are elected. The Persians were more into noses. It began with the founder of the Achaemenian Empire, Cyrus the Great. His notable nose was long, curved and sharp, and set the royal standard for generations.

Honours were only bestowed upon those with the curved, beak-y kind and young men would pinch theirs with bandages in the hope of coaxing it to grow that way. By the 18th Century, physiognomy had become something of a pseudoscience. The Swiss pastor Johann Lavater analysed thousands of faces to narrow down the features that were linked to certain dispositions. In his bestselling book, Physiognomischen Fragmente , he laid out a hundred systematic rules, many of which would later be disproven.

Suddenly workers, neighbours and politicians could be favoured or rejected not just on their social class and wealth, but their facial features too.

Across the globe, looking presidential became crucial to being taken seriously. In Washington DC, business for plastic surgeons and dermatologists is booming ; this is a place where faces seem to wrinkle at an unnaturally slow pace. Back in , Ukrainian presidential candidate Victor Yushchenko developed chloracne, pustules and lesions associated with over-exposure to the toxic chemical dioxin.

Tests revealed the level in his blood was 6, times above normal; he alleged that he had been poisoned. Victor Yushchenko's face was damaged with poison, possibly to affect his electability Credit: Getty Images. While these modern politicians might not be using debunked physiognomy to guide them, they are probably right to be image-conscious. Though our first impressions are usually wrong, we almost always agree on them.

The bias favours politicians who appear competent, but also reliable, older, attractive and familiar. In an election, candidates with this countenance tend to win with a wider margin of victory.

Many of these features are self-explanatory, but what exactly a competent face looks like exactly is harder to pin down. However, a slightly less invasive way to look for clues is to make one artificially. The plan was to create a batch of extremely-competent looking faces and see what kind of features they ended up with.

To set up the experiment, first they taught a computer what a strong leader looks like by randomly generating faces and asking volunteers to rate how able they looked. Then they used this knowledge to create a range of faces, some of which had been enhanced to look hyper-competent.

As the attribute increased, they underwent a radical transformation: the gap between the eyebrows and the eyes shrank, faces became less round, cheekbones became more pronounced, and jaws became more angular. The competent faces were the most attractive, mature and masculine.

Female faces like Theresa May's are not associated with competence in psychology studies - but is that a product of cultural bias? Credit: Getty Images. Are these preferences hardwired from birth — or are they learnt? A consensus is emerging, however. Take the th United States Congress. Globally, there are just nine heads of state under 40 and 15 female heads of government or state.

Now they are much more about ideology. Progressive groups frequently seek to change not just who is elected to office, or how elected officials behave in office, but what kind of person is viable for office in the first place. Progressives seem interested in changing, as it were, the ecology of candidate emergence, providing evolutionary niches and ladders for contenders who often were not previously competitive.

An example is Run for Something, a group launched in January of Co-founder Ross Morales Rocketto has worked in politics for 15 years and knows his way around, having worked for multiple campaigns and as a political consultant. For those who run, it can provide coaching and mentoring, referrals and networking with donors and campaign operatives, and endorsements and funding. As of late October, Rocketto told us, more than 11, individuals had expressed interested in running, about 1, had been screened, and more had filed to be on the ballot in the electoral cycle.

Run for Something seeks candidates who are 35 or younger, have strong roots in their community, are interested in running a vigorous grassroots campaign, and, of course, are politically progressive. What the group does not screen for, Rocketto emphasized, is candidate viability, at least in any traditional sense. That is, professionals and donors make too many presuppositions about who belongs in politics, a determination better left to voters. Not all groups using the outsider-focused business model are ideological, at least not explicitly.

House incumbent in Massachusetts. In , the group says it recruited 23 candidates, of whom 17 reached general-election ballots and 13 were elected.

For , the group aims for 50 candidates 20 for Congress and 30 for state and local offices. The group does not vet for ideology, but its candidates to date have been predominantly Democratic. Individually, such groups may or may not prove influential. But multiply them by the dozens, in both parties.

Then add the fact that each new entrant in the invisible-primary space blazes the way for still others to come in. Over time, as this dynamic process unfolds, decisions about candidate viability are likely to shift away from parties and establishment bigwigs, and toward activist groups with all kinds of agendas.

We have no comprehensive data on the number of actors flowing into the invisible-primary space, but our investigation leaves us in no doubt that it is growing, and rapidly. No wonder the supply side of politics is where the action is moving. What are the implications? Perhaps the most basic of all candidate screens in the past has been that running for office is difficult.

It always will be difficult. But the vast new infrastructure springing up to develop and launch candidacies will reduce the difficulty to some considerable degree. Winning may not get much easier, but running will.

And many people who, in the past, would have been screened out as unsuitable—sometimes wrongly, but often rightly—will find their way to the primary ballot.

By circumventing traditional gatekeepers, independent groups affect not only who wins primary races but, no less important, who runs, and even who thinks about running.

The groups celebrate this change, as one would expect. One of the things we always say at Emerge is that we exist to complement efforts, never to compete with anyone. There will still be the traditional way of recruiting a candidate.

I definitely think that for the grassroots activist who want to run for office, they will without a doubt connect to groups like Emerge and our affiliates.

Political consultants we surveyed take a less sanguine view. As Figure 5 shows, 79 percent of consultants say that outside groups play a more important role in recruiting and training candidates than five to ten years ago—whereas a solid plurality says the role of party organizations and their surrogates has stayed the same.

Where does this increased relative influence of outside groups leave us today? At the same time, when consultants were asked how primary candidates have changed over the past five to ten years, they reported that ideology is displacing experience among candidate characteristics. Just as significant: as shown in Figure 8, a plurality of consultants 48 percent say that more candidates have backgrounds as issue activists than five to ten years ago—and a plurality 43 percent say fewer candidates have personal connections to party leaders in the state.

That finding reinforces what turns up in our interviews: party regulars are losing influence over candidates, and ideological groups are gaining. What is probably at least in part a consequence of those changes is shown in Figure 9. Asked how the quality of candidates in primary races has changed over the time the consultants have worked in politics, a 46 percent plurality say it has gotten worse and only 13 percent said it has improved.

Almost half rate the quality of candidates running for House and Senate as fair 38 percent or poor 11 percent. When we break out the results by political party, as shown in Figure 10, we find that Republican consultants are more worried about candidate quality than are Democratic consultants. Similarly, unprompted comments conveyed a clear view that candidates have become more angry and extreme.

If the candidate pipeline is selecting for independence, amateurism, and extremism, that trend is likely compounded by the growing reluctance of moderates to run for office in the first place.

Recent research conducted independently by the political scientists Andrew Hall of Stanford University and Danielle M. Their reluctance to run opens the field for ideologues and further drives polarization. Assessing the long-term effect of the outsourcing of candidate development to independent groups requires one to consider the Rodney Dangerfield question: compared to what? The answer to that question depends on the answer to yet another: will the independent pipelines supplement or supplant candidate recruitment and vetting by party regulars?

When you sign up to volunteer, you will be connected with your local Sister District team, which is led by volunteer District Captains. Your team will be matched with a strategically important and winnable race that needs your help, and you will be given specific actions to take to support that race.

Actions may include but are not limited to donating money, spreading the word on social media, phone-banking, text-banking, fundraising, and canvassing. Sister District will be in direct contact with the campaigns we support and we will have specific action items from the campaign for volunteers to take on. We quote this language because it describes to a T what the political parties did for themselves several generations ago. Those functions are being outsourced, so to speak.

There are definitely more groups that have popped up. I do think the model has changed. Still, Gholar emphasized that Emerge America has no interest in supplanting the party organization.

Independent groups can bring a sustained stream of resources to candidate sourcing while parties focus on winning key battles. Independent groups supplement the parties in a more important respect: they can target every district, regardless of the likelihood of winning—something parties cannot consistently do, because they are hard pressed to prioritize swing races and winnable contests. Independent groups, by contrast, can fight anywhere and everywhere.

Like guerilla bands that can live off the land, outside groups can operate inexpensively in areas where there is little immediate hope of winning. Instead of focusing on the next election, they can work on gradually altering the candidate pool and the local political climate.

These investments by outside groups might have long-term payoffs for both parties, or they might tend to elbow the parties aside, or perhaps both. The group intends to be active in all congressional districts, including the deepest red ones. One of the most interesting aspects of Indivisible is that it has affiliates operating in Republican redoubts where progressives have little or no realistic chance of near-term electoral success.

Similarly, Emerge America intends to build a presence in all 50 states and had organizations in 25 states as of October, an increase from 16 at the beginning of The goal is to develop pools of women ready to run as Democrats when opportunities open in hostile territory, so that activists and the party no longer need to scramble to find candidates among thin pickings.

Pushing back and showing fight could, in turn, bring more progressives forward as activists and candidates. In five years, Samantha Edwards said, Indivisible Midlands hopes to have a full slate of progressive candidates on the ballot.

Whether organizing behind enemy lines can change the electoral map remains to be seen, but it is, in any case, an experiment that independent groups are well positioned to try. They can also provide intangible but crucial commodities that the Democratic and Republican party organizations can no longer supply: inspiration, solidarity, and—not to put too fine a point on it— joy.

In their heyday generations ago, political parties provided everyday avocations for millions of Americans. They offered local clubs, outings, torchlight marches, songs, regalia—not just for a short period before the election but year-round. Long before social media, young people looked to parties to feel connected and empowered.

Independent groups can also provide intangible but crucial commodities that the Democratic and Republican party organizations can no longer supply: inspiration, solidarity, and—not to put too fine a point on it— joy. The collapse of parties as civic organizations has had dramatic repercussions, which we will not undertake to enumerate here. But Indivisible actively seeks to do so. How do the party organizations view these newcomers and the energy they bring?

We asked four Democratic state party leaders, in Kentucky, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and South Carolina: enough to provide at least a taste of how institutional and insurgent elements interact. The leaders said, in effect, that the surge of independent activism is a godsend—for now. Our job is one thing only, which is to elect Democrats.

At the same time, however, dealing with ambitious, energetic, and independent-minded outsiders also requires delicate conversations. I do have a lot of those conversations about what the party is doing. The group might or might not adjust its efforts. It needs to be constituency based. For both parties, Democratic and Republican, the entry in force of independent groups into the invisible primary presents the same dilemma: by their nature, the groups are dual-use.

They can support the party one day and turn against it the next. Overt civil war has already broken out among Republicans between party regulars and independent players—and for that matter between independent players themselves for example, the Club for Growth versus the U.

Chamber of Commerce. Our point here is not to predict how independent groups will behave in years to come, especially inasmuch as they will be doing all kinds of things simultaneously. Nor is our point to characterize their activities as per se positive or negative, or pro-party or anti-party. Our point, rather, is simpler, though we think no less important: the amount of infrastructure being constructed by independent groups to launch candidacies and influence primaries is game-changing.

The sheer scope and variety of this activity all but guarantees that the invisible primary will become the province not just of contending parties and their proxies but also, and perhaps more so, of contending groups and their networks.

Those original safeguards were dismantled long ago, but the party establishments stepped in to take their place, recruiting candidates and clearing their path to office. Even after that system was superseded by binding primary elections, party insiders and political establishmentarians managed to continue vetting candidates behind the scenes. The elected officials and party bigwigs and skeptical donors of the old invisible primary asked candidates hard questions about their ability to run, to win, and—crucially—to govern.

When we asked independent groups how they choose candidates to recruit and support, they mentioned all kinds of characteristics, from political ideology to community service. Only two groups said they vet candidates for ability to compromise and govern. Now, as we have seen, that arrangement, though not dead, is on life-support.

Self-recruited candidates take aim at every office in the country, sometimes storming right past every form of accountability insiders can construct—as the scofflaw judge Roy Moore did recently by demolishing an establishment-backed candidate in an Alabama special-election Senate primary. Today, in the latest development, independent groups are flooding into the pre-primary space. We can provide a smidgen of evidence, however. When we asked the independent groups we interviewed how they choose candidates to recruit and support, they mentioned all kinds of characteristics, from political ideology and economic philosophy to age and community service.

Only two groups, however, said they vet candidates for ability to compromise and govern. Both were business organizations the U.