For starters, inexperienced contenders just don’t face the same barriers they once did in attracting financial support from interest groups and donors. Traditionally, it’s been a challenge for newcomers to attract donations from political action committees, which are often key to congressional candidates raising enough money to win their elections. But Treul and Porter found that ideological PACs — typically interest groups focused on a narrow range of issues or just one — have given more to inexperienced candidates in recent years…

Beyond money, though, voters are also increasingly disillusioned with our institutions, especially Congress, and are also attracted to anti-establishment rhetoric. As a result, they may assign less value to a candidate’s previous elected experience and may be more receptive to outsider candidates with messages promising to shake things up. It’s this combination of inexperience and anti-establishment rhetoric that makes these candidates especially attractive to voters, too, according to Treul, as outsiders sound more credible making those appeals. In fact, her research with co-author Eric Hansen of Loyola University Chicago has found that voters have more positive reactions to a candidate when the candidate uses anti-establishment messages compared with establishment-sounding rhetoric, and that respondents may somewhat prefer an amateur candidate over an experienced one.

The increased success of inexperienced candidates may also speak to the weakness of our political parties, which serve less of a gatekeeping role than they once did.