While I was driving through Caldwell the other day, I saw an election sign for Curtis Bowers for State Representative. As I drove further down the road, I thought I saw another sign for Bowers. Upon closer inspection, the second sign was actually for Danny Bower who is running for County Prosecutor. I wondered, how many other people will make the same mistake? Why do candidates litter the town and countryside with signs? It is all in a name.

The most important criterion for winning an election, especially a low-profile race on the local level, is name recognition. Every study shows that just knowing a candidate’s name can affect the vote of many people. If you do not know anything else about a candidate but have seen his or her name somewhere, you will vote for that candidate over another candidate with an unfamiliar name. Now, some people will vote for “Anybody But …” that is not very common. Name recognition is the principal reason why incumbents get re-elected at such a high rate. Political party identification runs a poor second to name recognition in voter decision making.

The name may be more important than who the candidate is. Some voters confuse candidates due to similar names. Robert Casey, whose son of the same name is now a U.S. Senator, was governor of Pennsylvania having been elected previously to many other positions in the state. After he died, another person, also named Robert Casey, ran for a state office. This second Robert Casey had no experience and was really unqualified for the job but, in the end, he won. People voted for one Robert Casey thinking it was the other. I am sure Gov. Casey’s son has also benefited from having the same name as his father, as has our current president.

One of my professors at Temple University did a study to determine the effect of ethnic identification on voting behavior. Philadelphia’s city council has six at-large members (the other ten are elected by district). Everyone who wants to be an at-large member appears on the ballot together with the six candidates with the most votes getting elected. There are often over 50 candidates for these six positions. My professor compared candidates and their ethnicity with the ethnicity of the voting precinct. She found that people voted for candidates, even though they may be obscure, if they had a name that was ethnically similar. This was made even clearer when she found that candidates with Japanese surnames, which typically end with a vowel, did better in Italian-American neighborhoods, where many surnames also tend to end in a vowel. Looking at the current at-large members of the Philadelphia City Council finds William Green, Wilson Goode and Frank Rizzo. They are all sons, with the same names as their fathers, of men who had been mayor of Philadelphia in the past.

Bower and Bowers are inadvertently helping each other out. When people see one of their signs, they may not notice which candidate it is for. Name recognition may assist both candidates here especially since voters may not be that familiar with either candidate or position.

Go Yotes.

Dr. Jasper M. LiCalzi
Professor
Department of Political Economy
The College of Idaho