How do we make sense of what voters have been doing in this year of elections? Too often we think of the results of elections and the fate of democracy as something determined by political elites and political parties. But it is centrally about what voters are doing and thinking, what determines their preferences, and why they end up choosing the parties and leaders that they do.
In trying to understand what is happening, students at IDS regularly ask and debate questions focused on the democratic trajectories and fortunes of countries around the world. Shandana Khan Mohmand, who teaches the Democracy and Public Policy module at IDS, brings eight former students into the conversation, by drawing on findings from their MA dissertation research, about what voters want in 2024 – a historic year of elections with over two billion people set to go to the polls in 50 countries.
India captured imaginations this year with voters turning around what we thought was a foregone conclusion, that the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) would come in for a third term with a landslide victory that would further consolidate its hold on power. The BJP did win but with a hugely reduced margin. Well before the election, Reshma Sumitra (MA Governance, Development & Public Policy, Class of 2023) was already asking questions about the BJP’s uneven hold on power in India, asking specifically why it had not managed to win in the state of Kerala, even as it recorded huge victories across India. She suggests that the answer lies in the phenomenon of polarisation.
“In his book, HOW THE BJP WINS: Inside India’s Greatest Election Machine, Prashant Jha states that polarisation has been a key electoral tool in India, mobilising voters into homogenous blocs based on religion. The BJP has successfully used this tool to mobilise people across caste cleavages to create a dominant Hindu bloc of voters. Kerala and Uttar Pradesh are two provinces on either end of the spectrum of this strategy – the former where this tool has not yielded much success and the latter where the strategy has met with resounding success. Through a comparative analysis of these two provinces, I established that formal and informal engagements of people enabled by institutions at the local level create spaces that prevent polarisation from creating homogeneous Hindu voter blocs in Kerala.
In the 2024 election, however, the BJP won a seat in Kerala (after their last win in 2016). This again is because of changes at the community level. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and several similarly placed right-wing groups have been organising community-level initiatives for health, education, palliative care and disaster relief. In the last decade, they have strategically deployed several local religious and cultural initiatives in Thrissur, the constituency that voted for BJP in this election. Social service activities, organising temple festivals and creating physical spaces to celebrate non-Kerala festivals (like Ganesh Chaturthi, Holi) is bringing people from different castes together to form a more uniform Hindu identity at the local level, something that is similar to other parts of India. These initiatives have played a huge role in establishing a cultural hegemony and stifling more diverse interactions at the grassroots, paving the way for BJP’s electoral win in the state. This is quite like what Levitsky & Ziblatt’ argued is happening in the US too (How Democracies Die 2018).”
The role of narratives is equally visible in Argentina, though this time at the national level. Just before the right-wing government of Javier Milei came into power in Argentina, Teófilo Moreno (MA Governance, Development & Public Policy, Class of 2023) was concerned that positive performance in delivering services at the local level in Buenos Aires was not being rewarded by voters, and often took a back seat to factors like clientelism and national narratives built around big-ticket economic issues. The extensive presence of clientelism within Argentina’s low-income voters—thoroughly examined by scholars like Auyero and Stokes—distorts vertical accountability and prevents voters from “rewarding” a performing party in office. But narratives play an outsized role.
“During my field research, I observed a significant political phenomenon in Argentinean low-income households, particularly among the youth in Barrio Mugica (the fieldwork site, a neighbourhood in Buenos Aires). Javier Milei, a libertarian economist and political outsider promising to dismantle the political “caste” and tackle skyrocketing inflation, gained notable support across various socio-economic sectors and regions of Argentina. His presidential victory in November 2023, against established candidates from the Peronist Party and the centre-right coalition, marked a new chapter in Argentinean politics.
Despite his professed disdain for democracy, media, and civil society, Milei’s approval remains high as inflation gradually decreases. This raises important questions: Have Argentinean voters, including those in Barrio Mugica, punished traditional political parties for the disastrous economic outlook and rising poverty, in the process disregarding quite strong neighbourhood level performance in the delivery of public services? Or has Milei effectively crafted a narrative around his proposed programme that resonates with the electorate?”
Read the second part of this blog to find out more about the recent Indian elections, including:
- How hate speech is being used to galvanise voters
- How newsrooms continue to produce honest critiques of the government, despite rapidly declining press freedom and closing civic spaces
