EFFECT OF PROVERTY ON VOTERS' BEHAVIOUR IN THE GUBERBATORIAL ELECTIONS OF KWARA STATE, NIGERIA (2015 - 2023).

Poverty has been shown to play a significant role in the voting behaviour of people in Kwara State,Nigeria. In the 2015, 2019 and 2023 gubernatorial elections, poverty was cited as one of the main reasons why many did not participate. The majority of the State’s population lives in rural areas, where poverty levels are high. It is against this background that the study assessed the effect of poverty on voter’s behavior in gubernatorial elections of Kwara State, Nigeria. To get reliable data however, the study relied on both primary and secondary data. While the primary data was based on questionnaire and interview, secondary data was sourced from relevant documents. Relevant among them includes: Independent National Electoral Commission [INEC], Certified True Copy (CTC), 2015, 2019 and 2023; register of political parties and candidates, 2015, 2019 and 2023; National Democratic Institute report, 2015; the Center for Democracy and Development’s report, 2023 etc. The data collected through questionnaire were descriptively (via frequency tables and percentages) and inferentially analysed (through the use of linear regression technique of analysis) with the help of Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS, Version 25.0); while the information from the interviewees was thematically analysed. The study found that voter’s political participation in gubernatorial elections of Kwara State with positive unstandardized coefficient of 0.606 is highly affected by poverty in selected LGA’s of Kwara State. The study also found that voter’s turnout in gubernatorial elections with unstandardized coefficient of 0.34 (positive) is highly affected by poverty in the selected LGA’s of Kwara State. However, the significance of this can be judged from the P value represented as “sig”. The p-value is less than 0.05, indicating that the relationship depicted in the model is significant at 95% confidence level. The study recommends the need for government to have the interest of the people at heart and the betterment of the society that elected them and improve on the welfare of the people. As such, the effect of poverty on subsequent elections will be reduced. In order to improve election turnout in the subsequent gubernatorial elections in Kwara State, Government should make voting easier through initiatives like early voting, vote by mail, and making pooling places accessible; Kwara State Government should remove barriers to voting such as ID requirements or language barrier.