Eyes on the ballot: Priming effects and ethnic voting in the developing world

• Countries often include photos of candidates on ballots to facilitate correct voting.
• We conduct an experiment in Uganda to test the effects of photos on ethnic voting.
• We find that photos significantly increase support for coethnics.
• These increases likely occurred because photos primed ethnic identity.
• We find no evidence that photos helped subjects learn candidates' ethnic identities.

Many countries include candidate photographs on ballots to facilitate autonomous, correct voting. However, the possible unintended consequences of these aspects of ballot design have not been sufficiently considered. We argue that photographs have the potential to increase ethnic voting, particularly by priming individuals to consider identity when making their electoral decisions. We conducted an experiment days prior to the 2011 Ugandan elections, in which subjects marked mock ballots including, or excluding, candidate photographs. We find that photographs increased ethnic voting, and our evidence indicates a priming effect, while ruling out learning as a likely alternate explanation. Subtle stimuli at the end of a campaign can affect ethnic voting in developing countries by altering identity salience.