What Drives Voting Behavior in Southeast Asia? Evidence from Candidate Choice Experiments in Five Countries

Research on voting behavior in Southeast Asia has yielded numerous valuable insights, but it relies on observational data and rarely adopts a comparative approach. This article analyzes five original candidate choice experiments conducted in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. We independently manipulate a wide range of candidate attributes, enabling precise identification of each factor's effect on candidate selection, and investigate how the effects vary across countries and groups of voters. Results reveal a strong voter preference for candidates with a track record of delivering development funds to their constituencies. However, other factors, including partisanship and policy stance, also significantly influence voter preferences, especially in some countries and for certain voters. Additionally, voters consistently prefer candidates from middle- and working-class families to those from more privileged backgrounds. These findings underscore the complexity of voting behavior in the region, demonstrating that it should not be reduced to a single dimension.