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Pauling long bond orders have previously been used to obtain qualitative insight in the transmission through nanographenes. Here we show that this long bond order, the atom–atom polarizability (a measure for delocalization) and the transmission probability are intimately linked and that their relationships are valid for all alternant hydrocarbons. These relationships allow a simple rationalization of the transport properties of a variety of molecules considered in molecular electronics. As an example, some molecular wires such as oligo( p -phenylene) are studied, leading to a simple explanation for the experimentally observed exponential decay of the transmission probability with the number of phenyl units. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]