Demokratik toplumlarda siyasi partiler, seçimleri kazanmak için yarışlar. Seçimler, hem siyasi partilerin geleceği hem de toplumun geleceği üzerinde etkili ve yön verici oldukları için, her bir siyasi parti, seçmen tercihini etkileyebilmek amacıyla yoğun çaba sarf etmektedirler. Nitekim bir siyasi partinin iktidar partisi mi yoksa muhalefet partisi mi olacağına seçmenler karar vermektedir. Bu açıdan siyasi partiler açısından seçmenlerin oy verme davranışları üzerinde hangi faktörlerin nasıl bir etki ettiğini bilmek büyük önem taşımaktadır. Dolaysıyla siyasi partiler, seçmen tercihinde etkili olan faktörlerin neler olabileceği konusunda kamuoyu araştırma şirketlerine anketler yaptırmaktadırlar. Konuya ilişkin anket çalışmalarının sayısı hayli yüksektir. Ancak buna karşılık akademik çalışmaların sayısı hayli düşüktür. Türk seçmeninin oy verme davranışını etkileyen faktörlerin neler olduğu sorusu akademik çalışmalara son yıllarda konu olmaya başlamıştır. Türkiye’de mevcut çalışmaların çoğu, siyasi iletişim ve etkin kampanya planlamasına ilişkindir. Aday imajı ve bu kapsamda adayların söylemlerinin seçmenlerin oy verme davranışı üzerinde etkisi olup olmadığı sorusu, araştırmalarda yeni yeni gündeme gelmektedir. Araştırmalar, seçmen davranışını etkileyen birçok faktörün bulunduğunu ve bunlar arasında liderlerin söylemlerinin de seçmen davranışlarını etkileyici faktörler arasında yer aldığına işaret etmektedir. Bu araştırma, 2011 Genel Milletvekili Seçimlerinde siyasi parti liderlerinin söylemlerinin ve özellikle de siyasi rakiplerine ilişkin çeşitli vesilelerle kullandıkları söylemlerinin seçmen davranışı üzerindeki olası etkilerini incelemek amacıyla yapılmıştır. Bu amaçla Türkiye’deki toplam seçmen nüfusunu temsil edecek şekilde belirlenen 50 ilden tesadüfî örneklem yöntemi ile seçilen 5000 kişi ile yüz yüze görüşmek suretiyle anket gerçekleştirilmiştir.

Postmodern world is surrounded with perceptions rather than realities of life. Junction point of aforementioned perceptions is image. As people living in an underground cave facing back to the entrance of the cave and chained in hands and feet; the ones carrying puppets are convinced that the shadows of puppets on the wall of the cave occurred with the light of the fire as real in the Cave Allegory of Ancient Greece Philosopher, Platon, modern people also are captive of images. In other words, individuals define everything around themselves and their own selves by way of images and thus the border between image and reality is lost. As a result of that, they mess around the images of reality. The concerning uncertainty has got into a mess with the spread of consumption society. The consumption of material objects has become consumption of images. People start to consume images rather than material products. This case drags people to image industry and thus a fictive world that is built on symbolical values is established by bringing iconic or symbolical characteristic to everything. Creator of cyberspace, images encircle all people with mass communication tools and fashion. With the effect of these concerning tools, the difference of space and time between people living in different geographies is eliminated and individuals have become standardized rather than diversity, expressed in post modernism, by creating manipulative effect on inclinations. People speak and dress in the same way and perceive their surroundings from the same relative frame. To put it in different way, people are alienated from the reality of the world via images and they are directed to mental and visual consumption. Images’ spreading to everything and effort on creation of identity take also place in the politics. There is not any difference between the way of releasing commercial products to market and the way of political leaders’ taking place in political system. Just as the commercial products are released to the market in flamboyant packages and with the claim of rich content, leaders are also made visible in public sphere by well dressing and with the expression of a character having features necessary for being a leader with the help of mass media. The difference between living by leaning to media and being a real leader is related with how close is image and reality. To be more specific, the more the image is close to reality, the more it is attractive. If the image is fictionalized in contrary to this direction, it is assumed that this will cause worse outcomes due to its fragile structure. Images are founded on visual and sensorial-cognitive elements. Visual elements include material elements including physical features, dressing, hair style, body language, colors that address to eyesight of people, while cognitive elements cover abstract components such as charisma, consistency, honesty that come up as a result of mental and emotional structure of individuals. Within this direction, the image of leader consists of his/her physical appearance, life style, humanitarian values, attitude stroke against various problems and issues. The concept of image has become more significant with the question of “If leaders really have these features?” The characteristics that make an impression on the leader in social mind are formed as a result of a learnable process. In other words, nobody is born as a leader on the contrary to the discourse of born leader and many of the features that leaders have are gained with the help of experience and education. A political leader can influence voters and followers with these characteristics gained via image. Another component that contributes to the consolidation of images by establishing a bond between leader and voters and canalizing them into the world view of leader is political discourses as well as these elements constituting image. Political discourse is a pursuit of articulation for political actors to reflect of their own views against an event or perception, define and transmit themselves and to sell themselves to voters as well as being a search of bringing followers to intellectual/ideological structure. For that reason, leaders use discourses to provide the support of the mass that share the same view with them in the society, to increase the present inclination/dependency, to canalize hesitant voters to their ideologies by including them into their target mass and to rally supporters from ideological groups having counter-view. Besides aforementioned purposes, political discourses are given place to contribute to the management of image of leaders in successful way with the increase in number of voters that cannot identify themselves with any party/leaders. This research is conducted to analyze the effect of discourses of the leaders of political parties and especially the discourses that they use via meetings and political advertisements against their political rivals on the attitudes of voters in 2011 General Parliamentary Election by taking the relationship between political discourses and image into consideration in contradistinction to present studies in the literature. For this reason, questionnaire method is adopted as a method in the research. A questionnaire form in which closed ended questions are preferred is prepared for ease of answering from the point of participants and ease of digitising and analysis of answers from the point of researcher. The questionnaire is performed by means of talking face to face with 5000 people from 35 provinces selected via random sampling model in a way that that will represent total population of voters in Turkey. The data obtained as a result of the questionnaire are analysed with SPSS statistics packaged program.