Monkeys Predict US Elections

Abstract

How people vote often defies rational explanation. Physical traits sometimes sway voters more than policies do. But why? Here we show that rhesus macaques, who have no knowledge about political candidates or their policies, implicitly predict the outcomes of US gubernatorial and senatorial elections based solely on visual features. Given a pair of candidate photos, monkeys spent more time looking at the loser than the winner, and this gaze bias predicted not only binary election outcomes but also vote share. Analysis of facial features revealed candidates with more masculine faces were more likely to win an election, and vote share was a linear function of jaw prominence. Our findings endorse the idea that voters spontaneously respond to evolutionarily conserved visual cues to physical prowess and that voting behavior is shaped, in part, by ancestral adaptations shared with nonhuman primates.