Swing the Vote

In a perfect world, we'd carefully consider every vote we cast in this month's midterm elections. In reality, all sorts of seemingly irrelevant factors influence how we cast our ballots, especially in races we don't know much about. Here, a few surprising things that could influence the lever you pull in this year's races.

Ballot Points

Order

Candidates listed first in each race get a 2.5 percentage point boost, according to a report from Ohio State University. It may be that voters consider the candidates one by one and stop as soon as they encounter an acceptable choice.

Party Labels

When candidates are listed without their party affiliations, voters are more likely to cast cross-party ballots, a paper in Political Research Quarterly reports. "Nonpartisan" ballots also benefit the incumbent, presumably because, in the absence of party information, voters choose the name they recognize.

Photos

Preliminary research suggests that including photographs on a ballot gives a bump to white candidates as well as to those who are judged to be attractive, according to a study in Political Psychology.

Environmental Factors

Sporting Events

When a local college football team wins in the days before an election, the incumbent politician gets a bump of 1.6 percentage points, a 2010 study found. The good mood sparked by a victory may make people more satisfied with the status quo—keeping the politicians already in office.

Polling Location

Voting in a school makes people more likely to support education initiatives, according to a PNAS study. Scientists believe the setting activates education-related values.

The Turnout

Patience

Voting requires sacrifices—at least in time—on election day, while the benefits of casting a ballot, in the form of new policies, may not emerge for years. Accordingly, people who are patient and able to delay gratification are more likely to vote, according to researchers at UC Davis.

Altruism

Altruism

Among highly partisan citizens, those who score high on altruism scales are more likely to vote than their low-scoring peers, according to a study in The Journal of Politics. Though one vote probably can't flip an election outcome, citizens who care deeply about others' well-being (and think their political party can deliver) go to the polls anyway, on the off chance they can tip the scales.