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Each state has its own laws mandating the order in which candidates appear on the ballot. The effects of ballot order on election outcomes, in particular whether the order in which candidates appear on the ballot provides an advantage, is a continued political concern as well as the subject of academic research. While that research largely confirms that appearing first can increase a candidate’s chances of performing well, the consistency and scale of “ballot order effects” remains the subject of ongoing inquiry.

This explainer was last updated on October 23, 2026.

Background

The order in which candidates are presented to voters on the ballot is governed by state and local laws. Depending on where they vote, the first candidates that voters see on their ballots may be incumbents, representatives of the two major political parties, representatives of the party that won the largest vote share for governor in the previous election, the first to have filed their paperwork to run, candidates with names at the beginning of the alphabet, or a random selection from among the candidates running. The most common options states use to determine candidate order are by random lottery or party. Other systems include a combination of random ballot order, alphabetical order, precinct order, incumbency, and filing order. 

These laws also govern what other information appears about the candidate: 30 states require a candidate’s party affiliation be listed directly next to their name. Fifteen use party affiliation to determine how candidates are grouped on the ballot per contest. Most notably, 42 states have enacted legislation stating the order that offices appear on primary and general election ballots, with different guidelines for presidential and non-presidential elections (in presidential elections, that race is typically first on the ballot, but in non-presidential years, the laws in each specific state govern the ballot order of each office). 

As approaches to candidate order on a ballot may influence election outcomes, they have been the subject of some controversy. For researchers and policymakers alike, the relevant question is whether appearing earlier on the ballot improves a candidate’s chances of winning an election. Academic research into ballot-order effects has mostly confirmed common-sense beliefs on the subject: that appearing first increased a candidate’s chances of performing well in an election, and that incumbents often appeared first.  However, this research has also suggested that ballot-order effects are probably not equally strong across types of elections and types of candidates.  Furthermore, the cognitive mechanism that leads to ballot-order effects, if they do exist, are unclear.

Academic research

Researchers have long studied whether the order in which voters see candidates on the ballot has any impact on election results. Some scholars have found that ballot order can translate into an electoral advantage, while others have found scant evidence of that relationship. A series of studies have presented evidence for ballot order effects, studying a variety of U.S. elections. The following is a sample of this research.

  • Joanne M. Miller and Jon Krosnick found that candidate ballot order made a substantial impact in 48% of 118 Ohio downballot races in the 1992 election, where name order rotated by precinct. 
  • Krosnick, Miller, and Michael Tichy found in 2003 that appearing first on the ballot in the 2000 presidential election increased George W. Bush’s vote share in California by almost 10 percentage points relative to appearing last. This was relative to a ballot-order effect of just under two points in other ballot types used by other states 
  • Jonathan Koppell and Jennifer Steen studied the 1998 Democratic primary election in New York City, where the order in which candidates were listed on the ballot rotated by precinct. They found that, in almost 90% of nominating contests, candidates received a larger share of the vote when listed first on the ballot relative to being listed in any other position.  In almost 10% of cases where candidates listed first got a bump in vote share, that bump was larger than the winner’s margin of victory.  
  • Examining elections for city council and school board seats across California, Marc Meredith and Yuval Salant found that candidates listed first “win office between four and five percentage points more often” than they might be expected to if they were listed later on the ballot. This effect appeared consistently across offices and was not sensitive to whether elections were timed to coincide with statewide elections.
  • In analyzing nearly five decades of elections in Wyoming, Darren P. Grant found that states which determine ballot order by “prevailing party” found that this increased the favored candidate’s vote share by two or more percentage points.

Some scholars, however, caution against interpreting the results of these studies as evidence that being first on the ballot always results in an electoral advantage. Some have pointed out that the vast majority of studies concerning ballot order effects concentrate on the effect of being first, and ignore the implications of most other ballot positions. This leaves open the possibility that, while being listed first may be beneficial, the actual difference between being listed first and second, for example, may be relatively small. 

For instance, in their study of the 1998 California General election, R. Michael Alvarez, Betsy Sinclair, and Richard L. Hasen found that some candidates lost votes by appearing first on the ballot, and candidates listed last on the ballot won additional votes as frequently as candidates who were listed first. In their work on California statewide elections, Ho and Imai reported that in general elections, ballot order only seems to impact candidates from minor parties. Their results for primary elections, however, still suggest that substantial ballot order effects exist for everyone, especially minor party candidates and those running in nonpartisan races.  

Ballot order and the voter experience

Academic research also studies why voters might choose candidates listed first over candidates listed later in the ballot order. Research that reaches back more than half a century, for example, shows that students taking multiple-choice exams tend to guess from among the first few of their listed options.

In the context of politics, scholars have suggested that voters with little to no information on the candidates in a particular race search their memories for anything that might compel them to vote for a particular candidate. Voters start at the top of the list and repeat this for candidates in order, but tend to get tired of repeating this process for large numbers of candidates. As a result, the candidates at the top of the list tend to be the candidates for whom voters have found the most reasons to vote. Another explanation holds that, if the cost of making a mistake is low, voters simply settle for the first option in a list because they cannot think of a clear reason not to do so.  

The impact of mechanisms like ballot order and candidate labeling are difficult to test, especially when considered alongside other factors like ballot design, election administration changes, voting system changes, and general ballot roll off. The Center for Civic Design has additional guidance on ballot ordering, including randomizing candidates and changing the ballot order of races to prevent roll-off in downballot elections.

Examples of ballot order impact

California 

In 1975, California moved from listing incumbents first on the ballot to listing candidates based on a randomized order.  Under this approach, candidates are listed in alphabetical order, but instead of using the traditional alphabet, state officials list candidates according to an alphabet generated by drawing 26 letters in random order (Cal. Elec. Code § 13112(a) (2003).  

California’s Supreme Court outlined the rationale for this change in Gould v. Grubb, affirming that “a significant advantage accrues to a candidate by virtue of a top ballot position,” and ultimately holding that “the allocation of advantageous ballot positions on the basis of ‘alphabetical order’” was unconstitutional. In its decision, the court cited work by W. James Scott, Jr., who studied 10 districts in California without incumbents running and concluded that approximately 5 percent of each candidate’s vote share could be attributed to their position on the ballot. The court required statewide elections to adopt a process that gave every candidate an equal chance of appearing first on the ballot.

Alaska 

One of the most notable recent examples of the importance of ballot order and candidate labeling has been the 2026 Alaska Senate contest, where the Republican incumbent Senator Dan Sullivan faced Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., among other candidates. 

Alaska determines ballot order using a randomized rotation of candidates, meaning that a voter could receive a ballot with the two similarly-named candidates listed adjacent to each other, potentially making it easier to vote for the wrong candidate. During the primary election, challenger Daniel Sullivan Jr. filed to be listed as “Dan J. Sullivan” with a Republican party affiliation. The Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan sued, citing voter confusion, in an attempt to have his opponent removed from the ballot.                                                                                                                      

Alaska’s ballot order and candidate identification processes were two of the factors considered by the Alaska Supreme Court when the case reached it before the state’s primary election. Ultimately, the court decided the challenging Dan Sullivan could remain on the primary ballot with modified candidate qualifiers in place, and the Alaska Division of Elections listed the incumbent as “Sullivan, Dan S. (Registered Republican) Incumbent” and the challenger as simply “Sullivan, Daniel J. Jr.” with no other identifying information. Both individuals also appeared this way on the general election ballot in November 2026. 

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