An evaluation of the attributes of a political product (political leader) by young voters: A research on the students at the universities in Ankara

Abstract

In democratic countries, the way of a political party to get in depends on convincing adequate number of voters to politically buy its political product package presented in political market during the election campaign. Political leader is assumed to be one of the most important –even the most important- components of the political product package almost in all over the world. Thence, political leader has a considerable significance in the entire political package of a party and the characteristics of him/her are the primary determinant of the quality of it.Especially in the markets as in Turkey that votes mostly tend to cluster considering the characteristics of the political leader, the mentioned characteristics play an important role in voting decision process. Though the proportion of university students to total number of voters in Turkish political market is not so much, the market is mostly composed of young voters. Nonetheless, as university students compose of the highest-educated proportion of total voters, they relatively have great potential as a pressure group in respect of affecting political decisions and being an opinion of policy. In consequence, it may be assumed that this group has a specific political weight. To be aware of the characteristics that university students seek in a political leader is a topic of interest in both political practices and political marketing theory. This study presents the results of a survey conducted on a sample of 500 students educating in different universities in Ankara. The survey aims to find out the desired characteristics of a political leader in the eyes of university students and to rank them in a known set according to their importance levels. The findings of the study seem to be interesting in scope of both political parties and field of political marketing.