The effect of the party’s image relationship to voters’ satisfaction and voters’ loyalty

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this research is to investigate the relationship between leadership and the party’s image and voters’ satisfaction and voters’ loyalty in the regional election of the North Konawe District, Indonesia. Design/methodology/approach The study design is quantitative methods (Creswell, 2010). It is an explanatory research, investigating the relationship between variables (Kothari, 2004). The study population was the voters who participated in the 2015 regional head election of North Konawe. The population in this study was 37,429 people spread over 12 districts and 135 villages, and the sample size of this study was 276 respondents, based on sample size formulation in (Bungin, 2008). The method used to analyze the data in this study is generalized structured component analysis (GSCA), which investigate comprehensively the inner model (hypothesis testing for the structural model) and the outer model (measurement model for unobservable variables). The Sobel test (under the GSCA model) was used to test whether a particular variable mediates the relationship between endogenous variables and exogenous variables. Findings The party’s image influences voters’ satisfaction. The party’s image will not directly influence voters’ loyalty, but it will influence voters’ loyalty with the mediating effect of voters’ satisfaction. Research limitations/implications The findings of this study that makes the social security program as one of the themes in the competition reinforces previous studies such as in the Philippines, Thailand, Mexico and Brazil (2012). Various jargons are often thrown around to gain votes and support from the poor. For example, the term “populist economy”, where free public health and education services are often declared in various political campaigns, both in the legislative member and regional head elections. Practical implications The results of this research, i.e. the influence of the party’s image for electoral interests, would reinforce the results of previous studies. Sometimes the politicians use the poverty program, which is apparently neutral, but actually for the sake of political interests (Gallego, 2015). The results of this study show that the manipulation of government programs is often done to help the politicians in mobilizing the voters. However, in practices, the voters? satisfaction and loyalty are interpreted differently. The voters do not always sell their votes because of what they receive; it could be that the voters receive the assistance by considering it as a fortune or wage in return for helping the politicians. It was proved by the results of this study that the incumbent lost the election. Social implications Using the party’s image in a political contest has created serious implications in the development of democracy in Indonesia. Indonesia, which has chosen democracy as a political route, is still highly vulnerable to clientelistic practices. Although procedurally Indonesia has paved the main democratic consolidation after the reform, ranging from the legislative election to the presidential election to the regional head election, the practice of money politics is still occurring widely. The problem of vote-buying is more difficult to solve because law enforcement mechanisms are not conducted properly. For example, only three days were given to prove the allegation of vote-buying. Of course, this short time makes it difficult to prove the practice of money politics at lower levels. Originality/value The originality of this research can be seen from the following explanation: based on the results of data processing, there are interesting things observed, with the party’s image as the exogenous variable, voters’ satisfaction as the intervening endogenous variable and voters’ loyalty as the pure endogenous variable. This means that more and more community empowerment will increase the desirability of a candidate. This is unique in itself, where with this result, it can be concluded that North Konawe communities are more affected by the nature of the aid empowerment, durable and sustainable/long-term rather than momentary relief (cash).

Empirical Study on the Evaluation Model of Public Satisfaction With Local Government Budget Transparency: A Case From China

“…Government image. Same as the enterprise image being largely affected by the products and services it sells, the government image is also reflected by public products and services it provides and the way how public views the use of public fund (Suaib et al, 2017). A study on Mexican government projects also examined that the image of administrative machinery had an impact on both public expectation and satisfaction (Lobato et al, 2017).…”

Examining the relationships between political advertisements, party brand personality, voter satisfaction and party loyalty

“…Satisfaction refers to when the expectations of the consumers exceed or meet the performance of the service resulting in what was expected (Oliver, 1980;Suaib et al, 2017). In a political context, the society comprising of voters is termed as consumers who asses the Party brand personality performance of the political party.…”

“…Veenhoven (2012) defines life satisfaction of people as the overall evaluation of the quality of life. In a similar vein, the satisfaction of voters is when the vision, mission and programmes of the political parties influence the overall assessment of the voters for the political parties (Firmansyah, 2007;Suaib et al, 2017). Suaib et al (2017) determined that when the voters see an improvement in the quality of life with the implementation of policies relating to employment generation, arresting inflation rates, implementation of human rights, it leads to an improvement in their life satisfaction.…”

“…In a similar vein, the satisfaction of voters is when the vision, mission and programmes of the political parties influence the overall assessment of the voters for the political parties (Firmansyah, 2007;Suaib et al, 2017). Suaib et al (2017) determined that when the voters see an improvement in the quality of life with the implementation of policies relating to employment generation, arresting inflation rates, implementation of human rights, it leads to an improvement in their life satisfaction. Political parties sell their vision and mission to form a projected desired image, which is assessed by the voters and which further leads to their overall satisfaction (Bigi and Bonera, 2015;Suaib et al, 2017).…”

Money Trumps Ethnicity: An Overview of Local Election in Kendari

“…For example, in the 2014 legislative election, money politics was utilized by politicians in South Konawe (Suaib, Sahrun, and Kadir 2015). There was also money politics in 2015 South Konawe (Zuada and Suaib 2016) and North Konawe (Suaib et al 2017) elections. The interesting part of these findings is that Southeast Sulawesi people's political behavior was not unanimous in responding to money politics, and the impact on the election results was totally different.…”