The Influence of the Candidate's Name on Vote Intention

Over the years, factors influencing the voting intention were a fertile research topic. Until now, there are no studies in Romania that investigate the influence of candidate names or the voting intention. Through this paper we aimed to answer the question: "Do voters prefer candidates with a common name but with an inappropriate political program, or candidates with an uncommon name but with an appropriate political program?" In order to answer this question we used the experiment method during the 27th of April to the 2nd of May 2010 in three Romanian University Centers: Bucharest, Iasi and Galati. The method was tested on three groups of 14 Romanian students each. In addition, we had a group of 14 students from The Republic of Moldavia in order to compare the results. The experiment was followed by a series of interviews. Even through we expected that the name would be important for the voters the results were unexpected. The key factor that influenced the respondents' choice was the political program of the candidates. However; the results showed that there are still a lot of controversies about the influence of the candidate's name on the voting intention.