Biradrism as stronger determinant of voting behavior; Exploring the voting behavior of people towards different political parties during election 2013 in district Layyah, Pakistan

Faisal Azeez¹, Ch. Aqeel Ashraf², Muhammad Sher Juni³, Fariha Sadiq⁴, Javeria Karim⁵, Sayeda Mehwish Dildar⁶

¹Lecturer Department of Communication Studies University of Sargodha Pakistan

Email Address: Sher­_juni@yahoo.com

²Teaching Assistant; Department of Communication Studies University of Sargodha Pakistan

³Department of Communication Studies University of Sargodha  Pakistan

⁴Department of Management Sciences University of Lahore  Pakistan

⁵Department of Communication Studies University of Sargodha  Pakistan

⁶Department of Education  University of Sargodha,  Pakistan

Accepted 17 December 2014

Abstract

Voting is the main form of political participation in democratic societies and the study of voting behavior is a highly specialized sub-field in political and social science. The study was concerned with the reasons why people vote the way they do. The main objectives of the present study were to find out the factors which affect the voting behavior & to explore the factors that constitute political affiliation in District Layyah. A sample of 160 household respondents was selected systematically from District Layyah through multistage sampling technique. Specifically explored through this study the relationship of voting behavior with education, internal changes in the party, voter’s satisfaction and barbarism are those factors that had strong effect on voting decisions. More than fifty percent (55%) of the respondents vote for the candidate not for the party and (53.1%) of the voters change their behavior due to the internal changes in the party. The value of Chi-Square and Gamma showed a significant and strong association between voter satisfaction with particular political party, favor of biradrism and internal change in the party are strongly associated with voter's behavior.

Keywords: voting behavior, religion, caste, ethnicity and biradri