1 On the Causes and Consequences of Ballot Order Effects

We investigate the mechanisms leading to ballot order effects in California city council and school board elections. We show that being listed first on the ballot increases a candidate’s likelihood of winning office by about five percentage points. Being listed in the median ballot position, on the other hand, reduces the likelihood of winning office by 2.5 percentage points. These findings are robust to the presence of incumbents in the race, the presence of statewide races on the ballot, and are similar in city council and school board races. Standard satisficing models cannot fully explain ballot order effects in our dataset of multi-winner elections because candidates listed second perform significantly worse than candidates listed first but relatively similar to candidates listed third