A research on voter behavior in the context of trust in political leadership

Voters are influenced by a number of preferential factors to determine power. It is possible to list these factors as sociological, psychological, rational and other factors (voting the issue, voting ideology). Another factor influencing voter behavior is the leadership. Especially trust in leadership has an important effect in determining voter behavior. Within the context of the political communication activities carried out in order to create power, it is seen that the political leader has an important influence today. In this process, the political propaganda activities are shaped in the context of the confidence of the leaders in terms of content. The reason for this is that the consistency of what the leaders say in their election campaigns and what they do when they come to power is one of the most important points that voters pay attention to. The work carried out in this framework comes in three parts. In the first part, leader and trust relations are discussed. In the second part, voter behavior and leader relation are discussed. In the third part, the results obtained by in vestigating voters' voting preference in the context of trust in political leadership are evaluated. Research, utilizing online survey was administered to 650 voters living in Turkey. As a result of the analysis made, it can be seen that the confidence in leadership, including performance, communication, interpersonal communication and image, can be divided into 4 factors; six factors including rational expectation, ideology, media, leader, success and sociological factors affecting voter behavior have been identified. As a result of the analysis, it is seen that trust in the lid has a significant effect on voter behavior.