Parliamentary Elections
June 2003

Center for Strategic Studies
University of Jordan

Participation effectiveness 

Most Jordanians think that election is a national duty (90.2%) and 84.1% think that public elections enhance democracy, 81.5% agreed with the following statement "your vote has an effect to decide the election results". Even though, election percentage reached just 58%.

Why participation?

Voters have taken various incentives and motivations into account when they voted. A third of the sample (33.8%) of surveyed said that they elected because they feel it is "a national duty and a institutional right", while tribes and relationship came the second main reason (20.9%), the third rank as main reason was "putting suitable person at suitable position" (13.3%) then participation with incentive of "democracy enhancement" (9.3%), but those who reported that the main reason of participation is "the district candidate provided and will provide service to the elector" reached 7.2% of those who voted . 

Parliament effectiveness

53% think that the new parliament will have an effective role in making internal political decisions and approximately a half of this percentage (24.1%) think that it will not have an effective role, while 22.6% did not give any opinion on this subject. When it comes to the role of parliament in external politics, the optimists' percentage goes down to 34.1%.

Political trends for election 

Percentage of voters to some certain political tendency (dependent/tribal) reached 22% of voters. While 20% of voters did not know whether the candidate they voted for has a political tendency. The percentage of respondents who said that they elected the Islamic Action Front Party reached 15.5% while 2.5% said that they voted to independent Islamists not committed with Islamic Action Front Party, 3.7% voted to the Pan-Arab political trend, 0.3% to the left wing and 57.9% voted to independents and tribal candidates.

Election TV Coverage 

55.8% of respondents reported that Jordan TV coverage of the election campaigns was fair, against 11.4% said that they were unfair and 29.6 did not watch.