Voters’ Personalities and Ideal Party Personality. Evidence from Poland
Voters’ Personalities and Ideal Party Personality. Evidence from Poland

Summary/Abstract: The objective of this article was to make an empirical attempt at reflecting the popular concept of brand personality within the realm of voting behaviour. We assumed that voters can perceive political parties in terms of features which are characteristic for people. Parties could be identified as separate brands which, in the process of communicating with voters, represent unique, more or less distinct personalities. The study used a set of eighteen selected adjectives to describe both the personalities of an ideal party, as perceived by a voter, and the personalities of the voters. Two factor analyses revealed a four-factor structure of voters’ and ideal party’s personalities. These factors were utilised to obtain personality profiles of the participants and of the ideal party, and to examine the relationship between them. Afterwards, a cluster analysis was applied in order to assess the types of the ideal party’s personalities, which were next analysed in terms of the Polish political market. We found evidence that there was a positive relationship between preferred ideal party’s personality and voting behaviour.

• Details
• Contents