Indian Politics & Policy Volume 3, Number 1, Spring 2020 | Page 97

The Youth Vote in Lok Sabha Elections 2019
political opinions freely. 7 They should
engage in civic life and associations, as
this civic engagement would motivate
youth to participate in politics. 8
In order to measure the engagement
of youth in electoral activities
(barring voting), an index of “participation
in electoral activities’” 9 was created.
A similar measurement was used
for previous National Election Study
(NES) data to see youth’s participation
in electoral activities in comparison to
the participation of voters from other
age groups. In the 2019 Lok Sabha election,
around 30 percent of Indian youth
participated in electoral activities other
than voting. This number has been on
a continuous rise (Figure 2). In the previous
2014 Lok Sabha election, the figure
was 22 percent. A significant finding
that emerges out of the data is that
participation of youth in electoral activities
has always been higher than voters
from older age groups. However, this
has been an opposite case when we look
at turnout, where the youth have mostly
turned out in lower numbers (Figure 2).
Figure 2: Participation in Electoral Activities
Source: CSDS data unit
Note: All figures are in percentages
The data suggests that young
women’s participation in electoral activities
is comparatively less than their
male counterparts and this pattern reflects
the overall pattern in Indian politics.
Nineteen percent of young women
in NES 2019 were found to participate
in electoral activities as compared to
38 percent of young men. The participation
in electoral activities was highest
among the youth belonging to other
religious minority groups. The only
difference one observes between the
young and the non-young is in the case
of caste and communities where among
the young, the youth from other reli-
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