Abstract:

Aim: Political marketing covers all the activities, carried out by political parties or candidates in order to come to power by obtaining maximum votes with minimum cost during the election period. Although political marketing practices have been delayed in our country compared to other countries, we see that political marketing activities are often used by political candidates and parties today. When we look at political marketing, it is seen that there is a permanent competition. The goal of a political party is to reach potential voters, to convince the voters, and to make a difference with the opposition and to come to power during the election period. The main purpose of this research is to determine the tendencies of students studying at Kafkas University towards political marketing practices. Method: For this purpose, a face-to-face survey was conducted on 400 students studying at Kafkas University. The data obtained were analyzed and interpreted by t-test, ANOVA test and Pearson Correlation at SPSS package statistics program. Findings: As a result of this research; the most effective factors on university students’ voting preferences are political product, leader, ideology, candidate, program and past studies of political party. Besides, male students follow more political news and participate more in political campaigns compared to female students. Lastly, political marketing components appear to affect young voters with different demographic characteristics differently. Results: The importance of the research is to determine the attitudes of young voters toward political activities and to reveal their level of participation in these activities. Thus, it is to reveal how effective the political activities carried out in our country are and what extent young people are influenced by these activities to vote.

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