When it comes to deciding which candidates to support in elections, it seems appearances do matter - at least according to research by a Kent academic.

As voters go to the polls tomorrow in council elections, a study has suggested that backing candidates on the basis they look competent or agreeable might backfire.

The study says such people are often ineffective politicians because they have the wrong sort of personalities to succeed in office.

Dr Madeleine Wyatt from Kent Business School and Professor Jo Silvester from Exeter Business School asked 138 local councillors in the UK to rate their own personality.

They also asked 755 of their colleagues to rate their performance in office.

And they showed 526 people from around the world pictures of the councillors and asked them to say what they thought their personalities would be like.

They were not told they were serving politicians.

The study is thought to be the first to measure the impact of appearance and personality on voting and political performance in this way.

The researchers compared these personality profiles and ratings of facial appearance against their share of the vote in local authority re-elections, and their performance in office.

Candidates whose appearance was described as competent had more success than others at the ballot box.

However they were not judged by their colleagues as any more effective while in office.

Politicians who rated themselves as 'agreeable' and whose personality suggested they were trustworthy and cooperative had performed better in elections.

But they were not judged as very effective by their colleagues after winning their council seat.

The experts say this may be because these traits may not be useful in politics, where debating and challenging others are key to success.

Dr Madeleine Wyatt, from Kent Business School, said: "We found that voters are not necessarily able to see what politicians are required to do in their day-to-day work and therefore have to rely on characteristics that might seem to matter for leadership, but may not actually be that important.”

"Our research highlights the potential for image consultants and PR teams to influence elections by manipulating the way political candidates are presented to the public.”

"This points to the need for greater transparency in the political process so that voters can get to know what political work really is, and who politicians really are."