,
15 tweets,
6 min read
Read on Twitter
And (finally) a slightly epic thread on voting behavior: What motivated voters? Honestly, we won’t know for a long time. But, reducing the 2019 election to a “Modi wave”--whatever that means--is probably a pretty big oversimplification. (1/15)
Despite a huge increase in excellent work in this area--by many people I mention below and more!--we still don’t have a great understanding of voting behavior in India, which makes quickly putting this election in perspective is really hard. (2/15)
Compared to research on the US and Europe, where probably hundreds of papers are written yearly on these topics, we have perhaps fewer than a hundred total papers on India that look at individual-level voting behavior. (3/15)
We don’t know whether 2019 was mainly about persuasion or mobilization, especially of young voters. Particularly where major parties have collapsed (viz. Left in Bengal), are people switching to the BJP? (4/15)
Or is the BJP turning out sympathizers who often didn’t vote. Millions of new voters have entered the electorate since 2014. How much of this election is about winning them over as @olhe argued was true in 2014? (5/15) 
Surely, there is both persuasion and mobilization. But, which of the two matters more has implications for how we understand the election outcome and its causes. In the mean time, here are some ideas, mainly from other people. (6/15)
On mobilization, I really like this paper by Chhibber and Ostermann. They argue that the Modi wave in 2014 was indirect. Modi motivated BJP activists who then turned out the vote for the BJP. (7/15)
Given the importance of partisan brokers and intermediaries, as Adam Auerbach tell us in his 2017 @World_Pol piece, are we seeing a major shift in local-level political figures to the BJP which is, in turn, bringing in voters? (8/15)
These local netas could be attracted by Modi, or they could be moving out of self-interest, seeing the writing on the wall that the BJP is their ticket to state- and national-level resources that can increase their followings and clout. (9/15)
@prashantktm emphasizes the BJP's internal organization and campaign tactics underlying the 2014 election. This argument presumably applies to 2019 as well. (10/15)
Chhibber and @rahul_tverma's already influential new book has an argument about transformational leaders as the purveyors of ideology, which may well help us better understand a figure like Modi. (11/15)
@tariqthachil tells us about the importance of service provision by the BJP's sangh parivar affiliates in his phenomenal book (which I reviewed in @The_JOP). Is more of this going on? (12/15)
Along similar lines, is the BJP providing the “right kind” of social welfare in places where it has traditionally been weak, as Soundarya Chidambaram argues (@AsianSurvey 2012). (13/15)
Or, has the BJP benefited from stoking status anxiety among various segments of society, which @Pavithra_Suri argues helped explain its post-Mandal breakthrough. (14/15)
A lot of smart people have put out a lot of good ideas (apologies for omissions). Sifting through the explanations that help us make the most sense of 2019 is going to take time and a lot of close looks at individual-level survey data. (15/15)
