University Students’ Council presidential candidates can spend months prepping and reviewing their platforms, but ultimately, image is everything.

“Everything from ethnicity, gender, the industry you work in, your family voting history — it’s had an impact on the image you create going into the campaign period,” says Laura Stephenson, a Western political science professor, in regards to factors affecting voting behavior.

Ben Singer, a previous USC presidential candidate, refrained from drinking the month before his campaign began.

“I’d go to the bars, but I wouldn’t drink because I wanted to make sure the image I was presenting was what I wanted to bring to the USC,” Singer, said. “I wanted to bring a very serious managerial perspective, so I presented myself at every opportunity possible as a serious individual.”

However, Singer will be the first to admit when going into campaign season, a serious image might not be the image students want to see.

“While I think it was a great message, it wasn’t a popular one,” Singer conceded. “That’s the problem — you have to balance popularity with priorities.”

For previous USC presidential candidate Ashley Bushfield it was important for her that her campaign image not interfere with who she was.

“[My campaign team and I] spoke a lot about running as a woman […] we spoke a lot about running as a feminist […] we knew there were stereotypes that would have to be worked against that,” Bushfield said. “We talked about these things at length and ways to combat it, but what it came to was that I wasn’t going to run as somebody I wasn’t.”

Bushfield emphasized the difficulties she encountered during her campaign season. From the sexualization of the female candidates, to direct questioning of her sexual orientation, Bushfield’s journey to election night was far from easy.

“The perception of how you think you’re being perceived can be skewed, but there was more than one instance where I felt like I was being judged as a woman,” she said.

Singer also faced his share of obstacles during last year’s election season. Throughout the campaign, Singer was questioned about his views on the Muslim prayer space, and he was accused of wearing his traditional kippah as a means of gaining the Jewish vote.

Singer was hesitant to speculate whether race and religion influenced the student vote, but he was confident a candidate’s image has a significant impact on their success.

“Voting based on image is probably the most efficient way to gather information — whether sex, religion and race play a part into that, I don’t know — we don’t have the data for that. But the image a candidate puts forward is going to be a Coles Notes of who they are and what they’re going to do with the USC,” Singer said.

To ensure students are getting an accurate representation of a candidate, their image must be infused in absolutely everything.

“That image should permeate everything you do. It should be in the platform, the policies, your campaign material — everything,” says Dan Moulton, who was campaign manager for current USC president Emily Rowe. Moulton added this image has to be consistent from the beginning of the campaign to the end.

It may be image has become such an influencing factor simply because the attention span and time constraints of students prevent them from delving into candidates’ platforms as thoroughly as they should.

“It takes a while to communicate complex ideas, and unfortunately you don’t always have that much time,” Singer said.

The question becomes what students sacrifice by simply trusting the image presented to them.

“How can you be empowered to think it’s anything more than a popularity contest if that’s what a candidate puts out there?” Bushfield wondered.