Theories on ticket balancing assume that the success of a list in an open list PR system is related to the distribution of the candidates on the list according to variables such as age, gender, professional background and residence. To test these assumptions data were collected about 179 lists for the 2003, 2007 and 2010 federal and 2004 and 2009 regional elections, in the Flemish region of Belgium. A multivariate analysis shows that a list is more successful compared to the other lists of the party in the election if there are more incumbents and aldermen or majors on the list, and less young candidates. A similar analysis with the relative swing as dependent variable suggests that only the age and the number of aldermen or majors have a causal effect on the success. The success of a list does not seem to depend on the visibility of woman candidates, the professional profi les of the candidates, their geographical dispersion or the total campaign expenditures.