Lok Sabha 2024: How important are emotions to electoral politics?
Analyses of voters through the lens of socio-economic or identity-based concerns can create the misplaced perception that emotions are ‘irrational’.
In India’s general elections, scheduled for April-May 2024, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party is hoping to repeat, if not outdo, its 2019 performance.
In those elections, the party and its allies garnered 45% of the vote share and won over 300 seats in the 543-member Lok Sabha. Few observers had anticipated this scale of victory, subsequently attributed to factors ranging from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s persona, the BJP’s superior party organisation and higher levels of financial endowments and its skillful blending of Hindutva, nationalism and social welfare.
In the 2024 elections, the BJP is aiming to cross the 400-seat mark, building on the fervour created by the January inauguration of the Ram temple in Ayodhya.
As the elections approach, we can expect analysts to mull over the same questions: why do people vote the way they do? What motivates voters, in India and elsewhere, to vote overwhelmingly for some parties and ignore others? Are voters rational entities or emotional beings?
While we have a growing understanding, as well as scholarship on the role of emotions in the context of protest politics, social movements, and riots, we have been left with the erroneous assumption that emotions are unimportant to electoral politics.
Scholarly efforts at understanding Indian voters have often focused on...
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