Political marketing: Structural models of advertising influence and voter behavior

Authors:

• Andrzej Falkowski,
• Wojciech Cwalina

Abstract

​The main goal of the chapter is to show the way in which the sequential model of the influence of advertising on voting behaviors or the structural model of voter’s choice behavior were developed. The research conducted so far on the influence of political advertising and the role of media, the affect and cognitive organization of political reality on controlling voter behavior has not often included one of the most fundamental regularities in human behavior, namely the fact that perceived political events are put by humans in causal relationships. The image of a politician is related to the feelings toward him and they influence each other in the process of experiencing political advertising; and so are related, in mutual causal relations determining the voter’s choice behavior, the perception of the function of the media for political elections, the affect and a politician’s voting program. Such a causal analysis of voter’s behavior allows one to generally test two approaches, i.e. the realist and constructivist, in organizing political reality in voter’s mid. On a more detailed level, it can be used for cross-cultural comparisons. Those issues were analyzed based, among others, on the results of the research conducted according to the sequential model of the influence of advertising on voting behaviors and the structural model of voter’s choice behavior in Poland and the U.S.