• Voting behaviour defines the pattern of casting vote or the factors that influence people in casting vote. It is not only about the observation of voting statistics, record and electoral data (shifts) but also about psychological factors such as perception, emotion etc. Caste, Class, Gender, Tribes, Language, and Religion are important determinants of voting behaviour in India.
• Richard Rose and Harve Massavir point out, voting covers as many as six important functions .It involves an individual’s choice of governors or major governmental policies. Samuel S. Eldersveld in his ‘theory and Method in voting Behaviour research’ writes. “The term ‘Voting Behaviour’ is not new. But it has been used of late to describe certain areas of study and types of political phenomena which previously had either not been conceived or were considered irrelevant.” Voting behavior is not confi ned to the examination of voting statistics, records and computation of electoral shifts and swings.
• Political factors governing behavior
• Charisma: It means the exceptional quality of a factor and overrides group elements leader that becomes a source of attraction and reverence for the people in large numbers in an opposite sense, It also means a source of fear to many people because they do not speak or dare to speak against the wishes of a powerful leader. The image of Jayaprakash Narayan had the same effect in the elections of 1977. The personality of Modi, BJP won the election of 2014.
• Caste: Caste has deep roots in society and constitutes an important basis for social relations at all levels. Despite the adoption of various provisions that prohibit action and discrimination on the basis, the caste continues to be a determining factor in political behaviour. Morris Jones writes, “Politics is more important for caste and caste is more important for politics than before”.
• Ideological commitment: Most of the voters are crazy about a particular ideology and they keep in view the ideology of the candidate and the political party at the time of casting their votes. This fact is applicable to the voters who are the supporters of the leftist parties.
• Party loyalty: In India, many of the people are attached to their different political party and they always cast their vote in favor of the party rather than the candidate. We can’t change their party loyalty even when they know that their candidate would not be going to win, such voters are known as committed voters.

However nowadays Electoral behavior of voters is governed more by the social and economic factors than the political factors. These are:  

• Firstly, with respect to state elections, many ruling parties in recent years have succeeded in transcending narrow caste appeals and instead forging much broader rainbow coalitions of many discrete caste and religious communities across the social hierarchy. This shift toward stitching together wide-ranging social coalitions suggests that parties are gradually fi nding ways of broadening their repertoire beyond parochial concerns to include issues of a programmatic nature. The most common example cited in this regard is Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar from the Janata Dal (United), or JD(U).
• Secondly, there are several recent examples—at the state as well as the national level—of governments being re-elected on account of their perceived economic acumen. The UPA government won a resounding re-election in the 2009 general election, having delivered the fastest rates of economic growth in India’s history. At the state level, a crop of popular chief ministers has achieved lasting political power by combining good politics and successful economics.
• Thirdly, hard evidence is emerging that economic voting is now a reality. Poonam Gupta and Arvind Panagariya found in a 2014 study that parliamentary candidates from ruling parties in states that exhibited better economic performance between 2004 and 2009 were significantly more likely to win election than candidates hailing from states which grew at a slower rate. The authors found that 85 percent of the incumbent party’s candidates in “high-growth” states won re-election. However Abhijeet Banarjee had stated a counter argument in this context where he said , In case of Indian politics economy does not matter much , people are still governed by caste, religion and ethnicity. Indian voters have a long history of electing politicians who are the subject of ongoing criminal cases.
• Results of last two General Elections and State Elections demonstrate an underlying demand for politicians who can get things done—even if they are connected with wrongdoing. When voters cast their vote, they did not necessarily vote for their caste. Social biases remain entrenched in India, but the transmission of those biases into the political domain is imperfect and may be weakening.