Rethinking the Influence of Agenda Setting Theory: An Assessment of the Influence of Agenda Setting Theory in the Voting Decisions during the 2020 General Election in Tanzania

The purpose of this research was to evaluate the agenda setting theory’s ability to affect and impact voters voting decisions during the 2020 Presidential election in Tanzania. The research specifically aimed to ascertain the agenda setting theory’s dominance on the voting decisions in comparison to other dominant third party factors such as prior knowledge, political affiliations and emotions amongst prospective voters. The research used FGD to collect the qualitative data while a survey procedure was used to gather the quantitative data. A total of five FGD were conducted which comprised of between six to nine informants whereas 478 questionnaires were successful returned and used in the analysis. A purposive sampling procedure was used to identify and select participants for the FGD whereas a simple random sampling technique was used for the survey. The participants for both FGD and survey were gotten from the Voter’s Registration Books (VRB) from each wards. The data collection was conducted between December 2020 and January 2021 in the five wards of Nyamagana district in Mwanza, Tanzania. After data collection, the data were coded and cleaned using the Scientific Package for Social Solutions (SPSS) version 20 before analysis. The frequency count, tables, descriptions, explanations, and simple percentage were used to present the research findings. The findings show that Agenda Setting Theory has slightly lost its power, it has been superseded by pre-existing knowledge (52%) and political party affiliations (27%).