Indian Politics & Policy Volume 3, Number 1, Spring 2020 | Page 109

The Youth Vote in Lok Sabha Elections 2019
of Modi’s leadership variable. Perhaps
Modi’s image as a strong and decisive
leader attracted young voters, and this
can be determined from the fact that
young voters who believed that demonetization
was a necessary step supported
the BJP. Demonetization was one of
the critical and bold decisions taken by
Narendra Modi and had received mixed
responses, but those who supported this
decision overwhelmingly supported
the BJP. Nonetheless, satisfaction with
the work done by the incumbent NDA
government at the Centre also attracted
young voters to the BJP. So, the major
takeaway from the regression analysis
was that Modi’s leadership was the
main factor that attracted young voters
to the BJP.
5. Conclusion
A
few trends emerge from the
discussion above: first and foremost,
although young voters’
participation in electoral activities is always
higher than other voters, the same
cannot be said about voting. However,
Table 16: Logit Regression Model for Young Voters’ Party Preference
Vote for BJP
B S.E. Wald
Satisfaction with NDA government (scale from dissatisfied to satisfied) .416** .161 6.670
Narendra Modi as PM (labeled 1) over Rahul Gandhi (labeled 0) 3.382*** .429 62.129
Feel close to BJP (labeled 1) over others (labeled 0) .755* .313 5.827
Joblessness as an issue (very serious to not at all serious issue) .221 .205 1.162
Price rise as an issue (very serious to not at all serious issue) .015 .189 .006
Demonetization a necessary step (labeled 1) unnecessary (labeled 0) .828** .260 10.124
Heard about air strike on Pakistan: heard (labeled 1) not heard (labeled 0) -.214 .415 .268
Caste/communities 10.401
Upper caste 1.507 1.018 2.190
Other backward classes (OBC) 1.650 1.010 2.668
Scheduled caste 1.226 1.033 1.410
Scheduled tribe 1.650 1.064 2.403
Muslims .225 1.113 .041
Social Media exposure (No to high) .046 .145 .100
News Media exposure (No to High) .079 .167 .222
Level of education (Non-literate to college educated and above) -.137 .186 .544
Economic class (poor to upper) .001 .129 .000
Urban .404 .312 1.677
Constant -9.254 1.637 31.972
-2 Log likelihood 480.238 a
Cox & Snell R Square .462
Nagelkerke R Square .621
Hosmer and Lemeshow Test: Chi square (sig value) 7.246 (.510)
Note: *** .000; ** >.000 but < .01; * >.01 but <.05. n=2566.
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