Explaining the nomination of ethnic minority candidates: how party-level factors and district-level factors interact

In this paper, we explain the nomination of ethnic minority candidates for lower house elections. We argue that these nominations are explained by the incentives that different parties face in different districts. Center-left parties reap greater electoral rewards when they offer descriptive representation, and that they also experience fewer difficulties in recruiting ethnic minority candidates. Therefore we argue that center-left parties have a greater incentive and ability to make their nominations more responsive to district demographics. More specifically, our hypothesis is that district-level ethnic diversity will increase the probability that any party will nominate an ethnic minority candidate, but this increase will be greatest for center-left parties. We look at multiple elections in Australia, the UK, and the US, and find consistent evidence in favor of this hypothesis. Even when center-left and center-right parties are nominating similar overall numbers of ethnic minority candidates, center-left parties’ descriptive representation patterns are more closely connected to district demographics. We argue that this helps explain how descriptive representation effects political competition more broadly.