We study the role of personality traits and cognitive competence in political selection? What kind of citizens run as candidates? What kind of candidates succeed in elections? Are personality traits and cognitive competence more important predictors of political selection than traditional measures of competence like education and income? Is selection process meritocratic or elitist? We combine the Finnish Defense Forces draft data on cognitive competence and personality traits to election results of Finnish national and local politicians, and register data on other candidate characteristics to answer these questions. We compare the characteristics of citizens (of various occupations), municipal election candidates and elected politicians, parliamentary election candidates and elected politicians, and those acquiring political leadership positions to each other. This descriptive analysis allows to understand how personality traits and competence are associated with selection into candidacy and succeeding in the political arena.
We find that verbal score is more important than arithmetic score which is in turn more important that visio-spatial score. Our eight personality scores predict political selection even more strongly than cognitive competence, with the most important traits being leadership motivation. They seem to be also more important that parental or personal social status measures.