Women voters are the electoral game changers, and thus Indian state political parties are increasingly basing economic incentives, welfare schemes and cash transfers on targets as electoral tools to steer voting preferences. This paper examines the relationship between economic incentives for women voters, including welfare schemes, conditional cash transfers, and household economic incentives, and their impact on voting behaviour during the Jharkhand State Elections. Using a mixed method of constituency-level turnout metrics with an extensive voting survey (N = 31,640), this article explores whether women's turnout in the Jharkhand State Elections is related to a shift in party preference (since parties heavily focus on this incentive) and if this varies from male turnout. Overall, a logistic and multinomial regressions confirm that women's voting behaviour is habituated by perceived benefits, economic household welfare, MLA/CM assessment, and socio-economic environment. Results indicate that women turnout more than men overall, and in specific constituencies where incentives are more prevalent, female turnout generally outweighs male turnout.

Furthermore, economic incentives predict women's voting preference more powerfully than men's. Ultimately, these findings contribute to larger conversations about gendered behaviour in politics and policy-making processes, welfare politics, and associated electoral instruments, which increasingly show that incentives have become a leading feature through which the female vote bank is becoming increasingly engaged in Jharkhand. These findings have significant practical implications for the effectiveness of political instruments, democratic participation, and the development of gender-sensitive welfare..