The Performance of a Corruption-Suspect Candidate in Affecting the Voters Behavior of People in the Direct Election for Head of Local Government in Tulungagung 2018

This research argues that the performance of an incumbent corruption-suspect candidate affects the voters behavior of the people. The direct election for head of local government in Tulungagung 2018 demonstrated interesting results in that the winning candidate is one that has been declared as a suspect of corruption. If in other countries such as the United States, Mexico, and Spain the status of corruption suspect on a candidate will negatively affect the candidate itself such as by reducing the number of votes, this did not occur in Tulungagung. This research tests the factor of performance of a candidate suspected of corruption in affecting the voters behavior of people in the direct election for head of local government in Tulungagung 2018. This research applied a quantitative method with a descriptive and inferential design, with 400 respondents as the number of samples, 95% confidence level, and 5% margin of error (MoE). The Findings suggest that (1) the corruption-suspect status of Syahri Mulyo did not affect the voters behavior of the Tulungagung people, only by 1.1%; (2) the Tulungagung people were not rational in determining their political choices during the election, which is termed by Downs as “limited rationality” and was more affected by the factor of psychological closeness; and (3) there were external factors, being the role of patronage and clientelism, that affected the voters behavior of Tulungagung people