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Millennial Voters' Preference for the 2016 Philippine Presidential Elections: A

Simulation Using Conjoint Analysis

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DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.2983023

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Millennial Voters’ Preference for the 2016 Philippine Presidential
Elections: A Simulation Using Conjoint Analysis

John Vianne B. Murcia1

Research and Publication Center
University of Mindanao
E-mail: jv_murcia@umindanao.edu.ph

Ritz Larren T. Bolo

BSBA Marketing Management Student
Department of Business Administration Education
University of Mindanao - Digos College
E-mail: ritzlarrenbolo@gmail.com

ABSTRACT

The purpose of the study was to determine the most ideal 2016 Philippine
presidential candidate based from preferences of millennial voters. The use of
conjoint analysis warrants this intention by providing overall and individual
utility models of preference. A total of n=900 millennial voters participated in the
study. It was found out that political experience of the presidential candidate is
the most important attribute, while occupation/profession is the least important.
Overall, the millennial voters prefer a Philippine president who is an economist,
with experience as elected official, liberal-thinker, prioritizes economic growth,
and holds a doctoral degree. Individual preferences of voters were also
discussed.

Keywords: political science, political preference, 2016 Philippine president,

political simulation, conjoint analysis, additive model, Philippines

1 Associate Professor 1 (Marketing) and University Statistician of the University of Mindanao

Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2983023

 Election is the means by which
citizens choose their representatives
who would shape and make policies and
decisions governing the people. Today,
election is always associated with fraud
and violence. The act of choosing
leaders which is supposed to be a right
and duty of the citizens are often times
mishandled or not disrespected.
Nowadays, it is observed that election is
smeared with dishonest tactics like
vote-buying, results are manipulated,
and self-directed interests are
perpetuated.
Voters today have become
cynical about politics (Murcia &
Guerrero, 2016). The most important
factor for them in choosing the
candidates are those from whom they
will benefit most, as preference was
universally noted to be modified by
decision-making processes, such as
choices (Sharot, De Martino, & Dolan,
2009), even unconsciously (Coppin,
Delplanque, Cayeux, Porcherot, &
Sander, 2010). The shifting focus of
voters’ likes and dislikes of presidential
candidates over the past half-century
mirrors the shifting content of campaign
advertising – and that the policy content
of ads has produced a more policy-
focused electorate, despite significant
declines in the reach and policy content
of campaign news coverage (Gilens,
Vavreck & Cohen, 2007). Thus, being
both conscious and unconscious of their
choice, its effect in the election
outcomes gives the most concluding
factor to the growth of one’s own
governance.
In the United States, most
Americans consider themselves
Republicans or Democrats, because
party identification would be the most
influential factor in voting behavior
(Kenski, 2005). The American voter also
viewed party identification as a source
of cues for interpreting politics that
leads to “selective perception’’ in
Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2983023
absorbing political information (Lewis-
Beck, Nadeau & Elias, 2008).
Contextually, the problem with
Philippine election is that majority of
the voters are not intelligent, not
educated for voting and the candidates
they choose are not educated for
serving (Defensor-Santiago, 2012).
From traditional ways of campaigning,
politicians have seen the need to keep
up this election season and strategically
place themselves in the social media
sphere, where millions of Filipinos are
actively sharing information and making
conversations. The ability to reach such
a huge population – and potential voting
audience – became attractive for
politicians who have also learned how
to exploit social media for their own
goals (Dangla, 2016).
Looking at the cross-section of
the population, millennials, or young
people aged 35 and below, tends to
prefer a candidate on the basis of
popularity and to whom in which they
can benefit the most. Their lack of
education towards right voting decision
leads the people to select a candidate to
whom they found is preferred by the
common people and was swayed by the
platforms merely far from the reality. As
such, politicians view this as an
opportunity on capitalizing for several
means to be known and chosen, i.e.
using their family names as important
components of their campaigns, which
will likely have impacts on the 2016
elections (Cariño, Cruz & Navarrete,
2016).
More so, voters care on what
unique set of characteristics and
propositions each election candidate
has to bring to the table (Osorio, 2015).
Young voters are even dissuaded in
voting from traditional politicians and
chose TV actors and personalities
instead who have no experience or
sufficient education (David & Atun,
2015). In fact, voters’ electoral decisions
are affected by candidates because
voters infer candidate qualities from
candidates’ personalities and physical
traits (Anderson, 2007).
Studying preference in choosing
a presidential candidate is therefore an
interesting research that needs to be
tangled and examined in the aim of
giving appropriate basis to the right
voting decision on the youth today. The
interest of this paper stemmed on the
view that Filipino millennials have an
enormous influence on the 2016
presidential elections. They have the
potential to define its political dynamics,
as they make their presence felt as a
specific voting bloc in the political run-
up and day of the election (Lustre Jr.,
2015).
This paper aims to determine the
preferences of college students of
Southeastern College of padada for a
Philippine presidential candidate for the
upcoming 2016 elections. Specifically,
this paper would try to determine the
relative importance of a presidential
candidate’s educational attainment,
political experience, personality, and
platform of governance in determining
millennials’ preference for a 2016
Philippine President, and will determine
the most preferable presidential
candidate by deriving the individual and
aggregate models.
METHOD
Participants
A total of n=900 millenials were
surveyed in the study. They are college
students taken from four higher
education institutions in Digos City who
were reached either personally, through
social media, or approached during the
day of the elections. Of the total sample,
50.88% were females while 49.11% are
males. In terms of current enrolment,
34% are Teacher Education students,
22.67% are enrolled in either Business
or Accountancy, 11.78% are enrolled in
IT/Computer-related courses, 11.67%
are taking Criminal Justice, 9.78% are
taking Engineering, 7.56% are Arts and
Sciences students, and 2.56% are
enrolled in other courses.
The sample sizes of conjoint
analysis generally range from 150 to
1,200 respondents (Johnson & Orme,
2002). The sample size of 900
respondents is within the acceptable
range and is considered sufficient to
obtain a reliable conjoint-estimating
tool to address the concerns of the
study.
Instruments
This study utilized primary data
with the use of a survey questionnaire
to be distributed to millennials. This
survey questionnaire was developed
first using a series of key informant
interviews (KII) which were conducted
first to obtain four (4) most preferable
attributes from the list of attributes
derived from the review of literature,
namely: profession or occupation,
political experience, personality,
platform of governance, and educational
level.
The KIIs involved 10 millennials
who were asked to rank the four
attributes based on their preferences, as
well as defined the attributes into levels.
Their inputs were used to create 20
plancards containing combinations of
each of the attribute levels. Generation
of these 20 plancards was possible using
orthogonal array of SPSS 16.0.
Procedure
The study utilized the full-profile
method in designing student’s
preferences for a 2016 Philippine
president by establishing combinations
of attribute levels. Full-profile method
shows all the attributes was adopted for
the presentation of the stimuli as this
was considered to be more realistic,
more explicit in the portrayal of the
trade-offs among attributes (Bond,
2001). The full-profile approach is also
the most popular method mainly due to
its ability to reduce the number of
comparisons through use of a fractional
factorial design (Toubia, Hauser &
Simester, 2004).
Also, this study will use the
fractional factorial design to reduce the
number of evaluations collected so that
respondent preferences to the four
attributes can be fitted to meet the
statistical criteria such as efficiency,
orthogonally and balance among the
levels and succeeding part-worth
estimates.
After the data-gathering, the
responses from 900 respondents were
tabulated, processed and interpreted
using the conjoint analysis. This was
used to determine the order of relative
importance of the four attributes. The
SCORE subcommand was used to rate
the Student’s Preferences for a 2016
Philippine President profiles instead of
ranking them using SEQUENCE
subcommand. Ratings on the profiles
were decomposed, resulting to part-
worth estimates of each attribute levels.
Additive model was used to
measure the total utility of the
preferences of college students for a
2016 Philippine president. Total utility
was calculated by adding the constant
and the highest utility estimations of
levels of the four attributes. The basic
conjoint analysis model, which is the
mathematical model expressing the
relationship between attributes and
utility in conjoint analysis (Hair, et al.,
2006), may be represented by the
following formula:
𝑚 𝑚
𝑈(𝑋) = ∑ ∑ αij 𝑥𝑖𝑗
𝑖=1 𝑖=1
[1]
where U(X) is the overall utility of an
alternative, 𝛼𝑖𝑗 is the part-worth
contribution or utility associated with
the jth attribute (j, j = 1, 2, … ki ) of the ith
level (i, i = 1,2,…m), 𝑘𝑖 is number of
attributes of level i, m is the number of
levels, 𝑥𝑖𝑗 equals 1 if the jth attribute is
present; 0 if otherwise. The importance
of a level, 𝐼𝑖 , is defined in terms of the
range of part-worths, 𝛼𝑖𝑗 , across the
attributes of that level:
𝐼𝑖 = {max(𝛼𝑖𝑗 ) − min(𝛼𝑖𝑗 )} for each𝑖
[2]
RESULTS
The relative importance of the
five determining attributes of
millennials’ preference for a 2016
Philippine president is shown in Table
1. Importance measures are relative and
within this study. If the range of the
attribute levels that were tested
changes, the relative importance of that
attribute will also likely to change.
Based on the results in Table 1,
conjoint analysis reveals that the
experience of a candidate is the most
important attribute for the college
students’ preference for a 2016
Philippine president, having an overall
value of 25.308%. This conforms to the
statement of White (2005), pointing out
that a great leader functions in an
orderly and purposeful manner in
situations of uncertainty and is also
tolerant of ambiguity and will remain
calm, composed and steadfast to the
main purpose, all of these traits can only
be acquired by a leader with high level
of experience. Experience was followed
by education (20.703%), personality
(18.381%), and priority (17.717%).
On the other hand, the least
important attribute is the profession
with a relative importance of 17.439%.
Table 1
Relative Importance of the Attributes of a 2016 Philippine Presidential Candidate
Attribute Importance Value
Profession/Occupation 17.439
Experience in Government Service 25.308
Personality 18.381
Priority/Platform 17.717
Education Level 20.703

Millennials’ preference can also has an experience as an elected official

be described from the marginal utility
evaluated at each attribute level. The
most important attribute level is the
attribute with the highest marginal
utility. Hence, millennial voters prefer a
Philippine president who is an
economist, with experience as elected
official, liberal-thinker, prioritizes
economic growth, and holds a doctoral
degree. This means that a candidate that
is the most preferred attribute. It also
shows that a candidate holding a
doctoral degree is the second most
preferred attribute. Candidate’s
personality was placed at the third rank
followed by the candidate’s priority.
Lastly, the least preferred attribute are
the candidates who worked as an
economist.

Table 2
Utility Estimates of the Attributes of a 2016 Philippine Presidential Candidate Preferred by
Millennials (Overall Sample)
Utility
Attribute Attribute Level Std. Error
Estimate
Profession Lawyer -0.021 .093
Economist 0.083 .110
Businessman -0.062 .110
Experience Experience as elected official 0.332 .093
Employed by the government 0.215 .110
No significant experience in politics -0.547 .110
Personality liberal 0.081 .093
traditional -0.108 .110
iron-fisted 0.028 .110
Priority anti-crime and anti-corruption -0.047 .093
economic growth 0.036 .110
social services 0.011 .110
Education Holds a bachelor's degree 0.444 .084
Holds a master's degree 0.887 .169
Holds a doctoral degree 1.331 .253

(Constant) 3.582 .170

Table 3 shows the preferences of Philippine president. It can be inferred

individual respondents towards 2016 that every respondent has different
preferences when it comes to choosing
for their candidate. In corollary,
different voters have different
preferences because of each voter’s
background (Lauderdale & Clark, 2014;
Bormann & Golder, 2013; Carmines &
Stimson, 1980; Farquharson, 1969).
Voter’s background means the voter's
social identity, such as economic class,
ethnicity, gender, race and religious
preference. Voters tend to vote for the
candidate that conveys sameness with
them (Yates, 2016; Coleman, 2013;
Locklair, 2011). This sameness can be
based on the general background,
appearance or even the personality of
the candidate. In other words, voters
prefer a candidate that has the same
social identity with them (Verhulst,
Lodge & Lavine, 2010).

Table 3
Individual Preferences of Respondents 1, 2, and 3 for a 2016 Philippine Presidential
Candidate
Respondents
Attribute Levels
1 2 3
(Constant) 3.72 4.57 3.39
Lawyer -0.17 0.25 0.25
Economist 0.08 -1.00 -0.13
Businessman 0.08 0.75 -0.13
Experience as elected official 0.67 0.08 0.42
Employed by the government 0.29 -0.54 -0.08
No significant experience in politics -0.96 0.46 -0.33
Liberal -2.67 -0.58 0.25
Traditional 0.71 0.29 0.13
iron-fisted 1.96 0.29 -0.38
anti-crime and anti-corruption -0.17 -0.58 -0.58
economic growth 0.08 0.04 0.17
social services 0.08 0.54 0.42
Education* 0.14 0.11 0.98

Taking respondent 1, he/she fisted personality that has a platform for

prefers his/her candidate to be either
an economist or a businessman, who
has an experience as an elected official,
with an iron-fisted personality, that
prioritizes either an economic growth
or social services platform which holds
a doctoral degree. Total utility is
computed as:
U = 0.08 + 0.08 + 0.67 + 1.96 + 0.08 +
0.08 + 0.14 + 3.72 = 6.73
On the other hand, respondent 2
prefers a businessman president, with
no significant experience in politics,
which has either a traditional or iron-
social services and holds a doctoral
degree. Total utility is computed as:
U = 0.75 + 0.46 + 0.29 + 0.29 + 0.54 +
0.11 + 4.57 = 7.01
Lastly, respondent 3 prefers
his/her candidate to be a lawyer, who
has an experience as an elected official,
with a liberal personality, that
prioritizes social services for his/her
platform and holds a doctoral degree.
Total utility is computed as:
U = 0.25 + 0.42 + 0.25 + 0.42 + 0.98 +
3.39 = 5.71
DISCUSSION
Millennials most prefer a
presidential candidate who has an
experience in politics. Political
experience among the candidates who
are aiming for a position is one of the
primary attributes considered by the
voters. Prior to this, there are two
identified fundamental dimensions of
voter choice between competing
candidates: ideological differences
between the candidates and differences
in their quality as leaders. This quality
that a candidate had built put reputation
on his part and was significantly
considered by the voters (Shugart,
Valdini & Suominen, 2005).
Educational level of a Kitschelt, 2000; Ames, 1995), and
presidential candidate ranked second
among the important attributes for a
Presidential candidate. With regards to
politics, educational attainment also
plays an important role. Several studies
point out that education is of central
importance (Biesta, 2015; Schlozman,
Verba & Brady, 2012; Lewis-Beck,
1990). It is found that individuals with
higher education participate to a larger
extent in political activities than
individuals with less education. Hence,
education increases skills and
knowledge which might also affect
political interest and efficacy; factors
that are all important to see in a
candidate.
Personality of the presidential
candidate trails behind, ranking third,
while the candidate’s platform/priority
was ranked fourth in millennials’
preferences. One important facet of
candidates is their personalities, which
in a wide range of studies has been
shown to relate to electoral results
(Hayes, 2010). Mostly, personality is
treated as a one-dimensional package of
personal aspects about a certain
candidate that can either be liked or
disliked. Moreover, platform of
governance does not only mean the lists
of objectives to be accomplished when
entering an office (Bittner, 2011).
Voters should possess the discernment
in assessing credibility of campaign
promises (Watchenkon, 2011).
The profession/occupation was
found to be the least of the
consideration of millennials in voting
for the 2016 Philippine president.
However, no matter how least preferred
profession is on the preference for a
2016 Philippine president, it should not
be totally-excluded from the choices
since it will still matter because a
politician’s occupational background
tends to be a fairly good indicator of his
or her political attitudes (Peters, 2001;
politicians who have other careers aside
from politics will more likely to be
uncorrupt (Larmour, 2005; Caselli &
Morelli, 2004; Walzer, 1973) since they
have something to be used as a source
for their income.
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