How much my vote counts? Exploring a marketing map approach in a case of public university elections

Abstract

The last electoral process to appoint academic authorities for the 2010-2014 period at the University of Cartagena, Colombia, is analyzed because of its nature as both a public and nonprofit organization. Data from the official voting records reported by the institution is used to address the research objectives. The paper establishes a Marketing Map approach to show how much the votes of each one (obtained, from a candidate’s perspective; given, from an electorate’s perspective) counts when a standardized comparative base is adopted given a particular institutional arrangement. Therefore, the approach appeals the interest of the actual winners (and likely future candidates to another chair, or the same as reelected), future new candidates, university’s stakeholders, and scholars interested in democratic processes. The paper contributes with designing an institutional electoral benchmarking tool, technically simple to elaborate, and easy to read and to understand in practice. Also, the created tool provides useful insights to organizations or institutions with similar features. As underlying contribution, the paper honors the public nature of information in public organizations when available for rigorous analyses taking an outside point of view and contributes in its own way to increasing the available literature about democratic processes. Conclusions, future research avenues and practical implications both in political and marketing terms are elicited from prior parts of the paper.