AN ASSESSMENT OF POLITICAL ADVERTISING ON ELECTORATES IN THE 2015 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

ABSTRACT: World over, political aspirants adopt the use of diverse campaign strategies such as political advertising in order to sensitize the electorates to vote in their favor. These advertisements often present an exaggeration of what the society stand to gain by voting for the aspirant, as well as antagonize the opposition party. In view of the 2015 elections in Nigeria, the mass media has been flooded with advertising messages from numerous political parties. It is based on this that this study sought to investigate the influence of political advertising on voting behaviour of residents of rural community’ in Nigerian through a survey of 120 respondents from Iree Community, Boripe Local Government Area of Osun State. The Findings reveal that the electorates perceive political advertising to be deceptive; however, some of the electorates affirm that it informs their voting decision, while the ethnicity and political party to which political aspirants belong determine the voting decision of majority(47.8%) of the electorates. Therefore, it is concluded that political advertising has a positive influence on the voting decision of a fraction of Nigerian electorates, but the ethnicity and political party to which these aspirants belong are of higher influence.