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Determinants of UAE Voters’ Preferences for Federal National Council Candidates
Author(s) -
Yaghi Abdulfattah,
AntwiBoateng Osman
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
digest of middle east studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.225
H-Index - 10
eISSN - 1949-3606
pISSN - 1060-4367
DOI - 10.1111/dome.12069
Subject(s) - voting , politics , political science , descriptive statistics , voting behavior , kinship , public relations , social psychology , psychology , law , statistics , mathematics
The purpose of this study was to explore the voting behavior in United Arab Emirates by asking 1,800 citizens about which criteria they used to vote for a particular candidate in the past Federal National Council elections. Using descriptive statistics, the study showed that although patron‐client networks played a role in voter's preferences — as existing literature about Middle East voters’ behavior has established — they were superseded by personal attributes and the impact of candidates’ campaigns. Emiratis voted for candidates based on three groups of factors, namely: 1) personal characteristics of the candidate including: public speaking skills, political experience, age, gender and educational level; 2) impact of a candidate's campaign including electoral promises and content of the campaign; and 3) patron‐client networks including having personal and kinship relationship with candidate. The study showed that religious, political, and personal appearance factors were insignificant.