Neuromarketing in predicting voting behavior: A case of National elections in India

Political choice has huge importance, either expressed in the balloting place or in the exit poll, in bringing a political party to power and thus impacting the economy and society's welfare. Research in leadership and decision-making suggests that the physical characteristics and traits of an individual influence the consumer's trustworthiness. Despite being a less explored research area, studying the impact of specific verbal and non-verbal cues of a political leader through a technological lens, such as eye-tracking has been sparsely talked about. Three sets of experiments were conducted to study voters' visual attention and reactions to gage their willingness to vote. First, an eye-tracking tool was used to record the visual attention and regions of interest (ROI) of voters. Subsequently, a short survey was used to analyze the “willingness to vote”, followed by a pilot study on their attention to non-verbal cues from the candidate. Also, a sentiment analysis of the voters was gathered from social media platforms. The present study analyzed the non-verbal aspects of a political leader with regard to voting intention and found that even a few of the non-verbal cues have an influence on the willingness to vote for a candidate. The findings contribute to the literature of neuro-politics and decision-making by analyzing voters' experiences of two political leaders, Narendra Modi (NaMo) and Rahul Gandhi (RaGa) based on non-verbal cues. Political parties and candidates should focus on non-verbal cues to increase their chances of winning elections. In addition, practitioners from the industry should incorporate appropriate non-verbal cues while designing ad campaigns, personal branding, PR campaigns, and CEO addresses.