The Impact of Electoral Campaigns on Voting Behavior In the 2013 Jordanian Parliamentary Elections (Field study

Abstract: The most interesting questions about an election are not concerned with who won, but why people have voted the way they did. Understanding why and how people decide which party or candidate to vote for remains one of the key questions in political science. Therefore, the main objectives of the present study are to investigate the impact of political campaigns on voting behavior, and to find out which factors affected the voters? choice in the 2013 Jordanian parliamentary elections. A sample of 500 respondents was selected systematically from the Al-wistiya District. The main finding of the study is that electoral campaigns play only a limited role in influencing voters' behaviors and attitudes when choosing a candidate, and the majority of voters have made their decision even before the start of the election campaign. It was also found that voters who were influenced by the campaign were more persuaded by speech making skills of the candidate, as well as his appearance rather than slogans and proposed agendas