// posted November 04, 2006 by Lou Schuler

If you've ever looked for a plumber in the Yellow Pages, you notice a disproportionate number of them begin with the letter A. And not just A, but AA: Aabco, Aakbar, Aardvark ... The poor plumber who was actually born with the surname Aaron must be furious at all these phony AA-ers taking his rightful spot at the head of the listings.

Unfortunately, we pick our electoral officials the same way we pick the guy who unclogs our drains, according to Stanford political science professor Jon Krosnick:

Candidates listed first on the ballot get about two percentage points more votes on average than they would have if they had been listed later (flipping a 49 to 51 defeat into a 51 to 49 victory). In fact, in about half the races I have studied, the advantage of first place is even bigger -- certainly big enough to win some elections these days.


When do voters gravitate to the first name they see? Based on the more than 100 elections in Ohio that a colleague and I studied, it's when voters know little or nothing about the candidates, or when the candidates' party affiliations are not listed on the ballot, or when the incumbent (whom voters typically know at least somewhat) is not running for re-election. Thus, some voters apparently feel an obligation or desire to vote even when they have no basis for choosing a candidate and are drawn to the first name they read.

But Dr. Krosnick shows it doesn't just happen in downstream races for dogcatcher or G-string inspector. When our entire nation's future is on the line, people still go for Door #1, without even considering what might be in Carol Merrill's box:

In California's 80 Assembly districts, candidate name order is randomly assigned. In 1996, Bill Clinton's vote tally was 4 percentage points higher in the Assembly districts where he was listed first than in the ones where he was listed last -- a difference that persisted even after we took into account pre-existing Democratic registration levels in the districts.


In 2000, George W. Bush's vote tally was 9 percentage points higher in the districts where he was listed first than in the districts where he was listed last -- again, persisting with registration taken into account.

So the order in which candidates are listed becomes an intensely partisan issue. If you list by political party in alphabetical order, then Democrats always have an unfair advantage. (And we now understand why the Whig Party didn't last.) Anything other than a random ordering system gives the first-listed candidate a lead before the first votes have been cast.

But I'll tell you what: If I were going to form a new political party, I'd make sure it started with the letter A. Or, better yet, AA. And my first candidate would be a plumber: "Elect Andrew Aaron of the All-American Party. He'll get things moving again."

Tags: society