Keeping Workers Off the Ballot

Why the underrepresentation of the working class in political office is an inevitable side effect of electoral democracy itself

Why do so few working-class people go on to hold elected office? In the average democracy, working-class jobs make up about seventy percent of occupations, but only two percent of national legislators come from working-class job. In Keeping Workers Off the Ballot, Nicholas Carnes and Noam Lupu show that this disparity is not because working-class people are less appealing to voters, less interested in running, or less qualified. And the problem isn’t limited to certain countries, campaign finance regimes, or electoral systems. Carnes and Lupu argue that it is the nature of elections themselves that keep workers out our ballots and out of office.

Carnes and Lupu point to two inherent features of elections that discourage working-class candidates. Running for office naturally involves taking on significant personal burdens—giving up time, energy, and certainty about the future—that are prohibitive to people in such lower-wage, labor-intensive, and more precarious occupations as manual laborer, retail clerk, and home health aide. Party gatekeepers in turn have strategic incentives to favor potential candidates who can more easily meet the demands of running, and as a result, they pass over qualified working-class people. Carnes and Lupu argue that workers won’t have a seat at the table in our political system unless parties form institutionalized partnerships with strong worker organizations or democracies embrace alternative forms of leadership selection that directly harness the perspectives of ordinary citizens.