Indian Politics & Policy Volume 3, Number 1, Spring 2020 | Page 94

Indian Politics & Policy
Section 3 underlines the factors that
might drive young voters to choose the
BJP over other parties. Factors such as
satisfaction with the incumbent government,
leadership, support for major
decisions of the government, electoral
issues, and the campaigns led by the incumbent
government and the opposition
party are discussed in detail in this
section. Section 4 presents an analytical
explanation of the central question using
a logit regression model. Section 5
sums up the argument and discusses
the overall findings.
2. Emerging Trends in Voting
Behavior of Indian Youth
a. Voter Turnout Among
Young Indians
The first step toward participating in
politics is voting. In order to encourage
young Indians to participate in
elections, the Election Commission of
India used an aggressive campaign to
encourage voters to enroll and vote.
Voting is the most active form of political
participation, but unfortunately, not
all who are eligible to vote do so. This
section taps into the turnout among
young voters vs. other age groups. The
analysis of the Lok Sabha elections of
2019 shows that the turnout among
youth saw a marginal decline from 2014
and stood at 67 percent (Figure 1). The
turnout figures for youth and the other
age groups portray a somewhat complicated
trend. Barring 1998 and up to
2009 Lok Sabha elections, there was a
substantive gap in the turnout between
the two groups. There was less enthusiasm
among younger voters to vote.
However, since the 2014 Lok Sabha
elections, the gap between the turnout
among young and other voters has almost
diminished.
Socio-demographics factors like
education, income, caste, locality, age,
and region are also associated with
turnout. When we look at the voter
turnout of youth from different socio-
Figure 1. Voter Turnout among Youth and Others over the Years
Source: The data is weighted as per the actual voter turnout. Turnout for youth and others has been
calculated by the data from CSDS Surveys.
Note: All figures are in percentages
90