Voter and Political Candidate’s Status Homophile: A Ghanaian Context

Abstract

The diversity of today’s voters and political candidates demographic characteristics calls for the application of the homophily principle in understanding voters behavior. This paper evaluated the effect of ethnic, gender, religious and age homophily on status homophily, which is contextualized within the Ghanaian context. The findings established that amongst the factors affecting status homophily; ethnic homophily is the most influential factor, followed by gender homophily and age homophily, with religious homophily having the least effect. The findings established that voter preference for candidates during elections draws on ethnic lines and dissipate the established perception that religion is a major influential factor in voter preference for candidates. Taken together, this work highlights the importance of status homophily in political marketing research and practice and the opportunities for future research. It recommended that political marketers should develop and apply market orientation, marketing intelligence and demographic segmentation as well as develop positioning strategies using political brand personalities and brand ambassadors based on voters’ demographic preferences for candidates.