The Influence of Age on Citizens’ Preferences for Age‐Related Descriptive Representation

While in most countries the age of candidacy is 18, young people are strongly underrepresented in legislatures around the world. This results in a notable age gap between the average parliamentarian and the electorate. So far, the majority of studies focus on structural and party-level factors contributing to age disparities in descriptive underrepresentation. And even though young candidates are perceived as less experienced, recent research shows varying effects of candidates’ age on voters’ willingness to elect them. What is mostly lacking, however, is an individual-level perspective on age-centred representation. How does a political representative’s age matter for citizens and do citizens’ preferences regarding representation differ between age groups? We base our theoretical arguments on the literature on candidate characteristics and ingroup-outgroup behaviour. Empirically, we provide evidence based on original data collected in Germany—that age matters for citizens on all levels of government, but especially for young people (below 31 years). Furthermore, we observe strong and significant ingroup preferences for both young and elderly citizens (60 years and above). Yet, with regard to outgroup discrimination, we find a notable asymmetry: Young adults exhibit aversion to being represented by individuals over 60 years, whilst seniors do not significantly discriminate against young representatives. These preference patterns speak to recent findings that enhanced descriptive youth representation leads to an increase in turnout among young people by providing additional insights into the mechanisms behind this relationship.