Concepts like age, gender, and social class are not considered adequate any more to explain voters’ behavior. Since the 90s, new concepts began to come to the forefront besides these concepts in explaining the party preferences of the voters, and the balance between the concepts began to shift towards such new factors. In other words, the difference between the parties began to gradually decrease, and the lines setting the limits between the parties began to become unclear. Policies, programs and discourses of Tony Blair in England and of Gerhard Schröder in Germany are shown as the most explicit examples of this development. Hence, the perception that the ideologies have lost their determinative functions, and that this has been substituted by the leaders is very common today. Consequently, qualifications of the political party leaders, the characteristics sought for by the voters in the leaders, locating of these in terms of importance and effectiveness have become of much more importance in the recent years. This study analyzes the relationship between leaders and election success. In this respect, the study seeks to find ‘what the basic drivers determining the voting preferences of the voters are’ based on the Parliamentary General Elections held in Turkey in 2011, to determine ‘what the general characteristics sought for by the voters in the leaders are’ and ‘whether there are differences between these characteristics in terms of degree of effect’.