2026, Vol. 8, Issue 1, Part B

This paper investigates how political speeches and televised media debates influence voting behaviour in Odisha, with specific attention to regional leadership discourse, welfare narratives, and vernacular media mediation. Adopting a formal IMRAD structure and adhering to IJARESM journal formatting norms, the study integrates Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) with empirical survey evidence collected from 400 voters across diverse regions of Odisha. The findings demonstrate that welfare centric leadership discourse and emotionally reassuring narratives significantly shape voter perceptions of credibility and trust, while media debates primarily function as amplifiers of dominant leadership frames rather than autonomous deliberative spaces. By foregrounding subnational political communication, the paper offers an original contribution to political communication and electoral studies and advances region specific insights relevant to Scopus and Web of Science-indexed scholarship.