engleski

POLITICAL MARKETING AS A KEY ACTIVITY FOR REDUCING POLITICAL CYNICISM

With the emergence of the marketing concept in politics, the focus, instead of the political party and candidates, comes the electorate and their desires. Political marketing activities are aimed at understanding voters and adapting marketing strategies to selected identified segments. To reach voters, it is necessary to know the influential factors that shape their final election decision. But the fact is that in today’s democratic world, political participation is declining at all levels. Therefore, it is necessary, first of all, to investigate the influential factors on political participation to be able to act to encourage positive influencing factors and to reduce negative influencing factors. One of the most significant negative factors of political involvement of citizens is certainly political cynicism. The high level of political cynicism in modern democratic societies is considered a serious threat to democracy because it causes a decrease in political participation at all its levels. The purpose of this paper is to determine the existence and strength of the influence of political cynicism on political participation at the grassroots level (voting) in Eastern Croatia and the role of political information seeking. Also, the paper will analyse the potential causes and consequences of political cynicism and derive implications for reducing political cynicism using political marketing activities. The research was conducted with a personal survey method using a highly structured questionnaire in five Slavonian counties on a sample of 662 respondents. Data were processed using SPSS 26.0 (descriptive research results) and the Amos program for structural modeling which established cause- and-effect relationships. The research results showed a high level of political cynicism among the respondents. Structural modeling results have identified a significant direct negative impact of political cynicism on the intention to vote in the future and also direct significant negative impact of political information seeking on political cynicism and its direct significant positive impact on intention to vote.

political marketing, political cynicism, political participation, voter behavior, media.

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