Personality Traits, Ideology and Vote Choice

To what extent, do interactions between different personality traits induce change in one’s preference to vote for left-wing and right-wing parties? We use the Big Five Personality Theory and argue that an individual’s inclination towards political conservatism is related to his or her personality traits. In the literature, extraversion, neuroticism, and openness to experience are associated with left-wing orientation. Conscientiousness predicts one’s right-wing inclination and findings on agreeableness deliver mixed results. The literature treats big five traits as uni-dimensional and as if those traits are independent from each other and ignores the interaction effects between big five traits. We use a unique cross-country survey data from International Social Survey Program (ISSP) 2005 Work Orientations III module and test the basic expectations concerning the influence of personality traits upon political choices. Our findings are closely in line with the literature. Conscientiousness predicts one’s right-wing party vote choice, and agreeableness and openness to experience predict one’s left-wing party vote choice. When interactions between personality traits are accounted for, our findings provide a number of modifications to the generally agreed findings in the literature. We find for example that extroverts who are open to experience, neurotic persons who are open to experience, and conscientious persons who are agreeable are more likely to vote for left-wing parties. We elaborate on the significance of these findings for the study of personality influence upon politics and underline further areas of research.