Profiling voters’ requirements for effective political campaign: A case on Bangladesh

Abstract

Despite the extant literature on what voters want from candidates and campaigns in western democracies, there is little research available from democracies in South Asia on this important topic. To address this gap in the research literature, we identify voters' desired attributes of candidates and campaigns utilizing a face-to-face survey (N = 2,357) of eligible voters in Bangladesh. A nine-dimensional 38-item model is developed to discuss the varied preferences for campaign media and the desired characteristics of candidates and campaigns. Results revealed significant variation among different demographic groups, with one exception: nearly all appreciated celebrities and national icons in campaigns. Media preferences also vary significantly across demographic groups. | INTRODUCTION AND RATIONALE FOR THE STUDYElectoral campaigning is the best possible means for the candidates and parties to communicate the campaign promise they would like to make to the country and a specific constituency (National Democratic Institute 2017). As political campaign is one of the most effective ways to build and strengthen relationships with the electors, a carefully crafted election campaign reflecting the requirements of the voters can increase voter turnout rate (Solijonov, 2016), spread positive word of mouth communication in favor of the party/candidate, and enhance likelihood of winning the election (Kramer, 2018). In this paper, the idea of exploring voters' requirements came from the political communication theory forwarded by Riker, Riker, Riker, and Mueller (1996) who argued that "when one side (candidate) has an advantage on an issue (dominance principle), the other side ignores it; but when neither side has an advantage, both seek new and advantageous issues (dispersion principle)" (p. 106). Therefore, we believe, in order to highlight dominant or new and advantageous issues in the campaigns, the first step should be identifying the key desires of the electorate.Even though a good number of works (Denter, 2013) have been conducted on Riker et al. 's (1996) proposition, surprisingly there is lack of studies that go further and explore the desires of voters. Lees-Marshment (2014) argued that political parties need to fulfill diverse needs of the citizens. Moreover, expectations of the voters evolve over time and differ due to their demographic standings (a similar argument was made by Tinkham, Lariscy, & Avery, 2009).Therefore, demographic composition of the constituency plays an important role in the persuasiveness of an election campaign. For instance, material motivations, such as money and muscle power, play an important role in politics for the less educated and lower income voters (IDEA 2015), whereas inspirational features such as values, attitudes, and leadership qualities of the candidates are vital for the educated electoral demographic in many countries (National Democratic Institute 2017). Again, expectations of the voters may differ across globe. For instance, Vaishnav (2017) reported that Indian voters pre...