heyOn the third day of our field trip in Karnataka, we finally found a voter who was switching from the Congress to the Bharatiya Janata Party. We were in Yelahanka, a constituency on the outskirts of Bengaluru, after a lot of back and forth from Chikmagalur over the past two days. In our group, an encyclopedia on Karnataka politics, Azim Premji University professor A.K. Narayan, a veteran Kannada journalist NAM Ismail, some of my Addelu Karnataka campaign colleagues, and Sanket Nagraj Angadi, a friendly and sharp interpreter for non-Kannadigas. During the election we were doing what I love the most – traveling without a plan or destination, stopping anywhere, and talking to whoever was interesting and interested.
By now, we had met all kinds of potential voters: many Congress, BJP and Janata Dal (Secular) loyalists, some who were moving to the Congress, some to the JD(S), and a handful who would not tell. But we could not find a single person who voted for Congress in the last election and is planning to vote for BJP. A. is a clear indication of AirI told my colleagues.
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Congress ‘Hawa’
It happened when we met this man – age around 40, working for a transporter – having coffee with two of his friends on a roadside. The signal confirmed what this man had surmised from his broken Hindi: He was indeed going to the BJP. It was like ‘sighting’ a tiger at the end of a long jungle safari. I asked him what he expected from the BJP government. “BJP kill the poor [BJP will finish the poor]He had a blunt answer in Hindi. I was surprised and asked him how he compared the then Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai with the former Congress Chief Minister Siddaramaiah. This time, he replied in Kannada: “How can you even think of comparing the two, sir?” His hand gestures lifted Siddaramaiah up and he did not need any translation.
Then, why was he going away? He smiled and mentioned the name of a leader in his area who had switched over from the Congress to the BJP last month. He said that this leader has stood with us in happiness and sorrow, so we should now stand with him. This time we were closest to anyone switching from Congress to BJP. All other shifters were from BJP or JD(S) to Congress (in one case, Congress to JDS).
Clearly, Air This time definitely with Congress. In 2018, the party got a 2 percentage point vote share lead over the BJP (despite winning far fewer seats). All the credible pre-poll surveys I have seen this time point to a further widening of the gap. vote It was 4 percent, according to Cicero’s January estimate. c voter Recently 6 per cent Lokniti-CSDS has been called survey Something similar is being suggested for NDTV, while eedina.com survey Estimate 10% lead for Congress.
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anti incumbency
This Air This is directly related to the perception of the people towards the current Bommai government. We could not find any BJP voter enthusiastically supporting it. The moment we discussed its performance, we were met with awkward silence or a sly smile. The common refrain was: “We are not voting for him. We are voting for Modi.” No BJP Voter Defends Bommai Govt Against “40 Percent” Allegations Government(Government extracting 40% deduction on every project). They will simply retort: “So, what’s new? Which government is not corrupt? Wasn’t the Congress corrupt?”
This sentiment is duly reflected in survey data from various sources. In my years as a survey researcher, I found that the best representative for voting intention was a simple question: Should the current government get another term? The last time the Congress lost the elections, the ratio of those who were in favor and against giving the Congress government another chance was 1:1. This time, the ratio of yes to no is higher in each survey – about 1.7:1 in the CSDS survey and 2:1 in the Edina survey. If BJP still has an upper hand in some seats, it is because some MLAs have a good track record of local work. The Edina survey recorded a lower anti-incumbency wave against the ruling party’s legislators than the state government. Karnataka has regularly thrown out the incumbent government over several decades. This doesn’t seem to be an exception.
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class division
The lower you go, the stronger the wind. None of the poor voters had a good word for the BJP. as I mentioned in my Article Last week, there was a clear rich-poor divide among the voters of Karnataka. The richer the voter, the smaller the lead for the Congress and vice versa for the BJP. It was clearly visible on the ground. As soon as you talk to a poor person, he starts rattling off those items of everyday consumption which are now unaffordable. Gas cylinder prices have topped the charts. “Earlier, we were running with firewood. They gave us gas. Now we can’t go back to firewood. Nor can we afford gas cylinders,” said one.
Almost everyone complained about the cut in free rice per person to 10 kg per month during Congress time now 5 kg. After this comes the prices of petrol and diesel. Farmers complained about the prices of fertilizers. They mock the Kisan Samman Nidhi: “They give us 2,000 but take more than that from our pocket.” More common people are aware of GST and blame it for higher prices than you can imagine.
It is not that poor voters are not voting for BJP, but it is largely a vote for a local candidate or an obligation under the patron-client relationship. Even the poor people who intend to vote for the BJP do not consider it their party, except in the coastal region where the BJP has taken deep roots.
Siddaramaiah is the darling of the poor. Of course, “poor” is a subjective term, not limited to an official poverty line. In this, three-fourth of the population of villages and more than half of the population of cities can easily be included. To lose favor with the poor is to lose the support of an overwhelming majority of voters.
no communal tone
Finally, it Air Not blocked by a wall of communal divide. Hindu-Muslim tensions do not figure in regular political discourse in Karnataka. We didn’t talk to anyone unless specifically asked, unless the Hindu-Muslim issue was raised. This may sound strange in a state that regularly makes headlines for wrong reasons like Hijab, Azaan, Love Jihad and now Bajrang Dal. It is too early to conclude that communal polarization has gone away from Karnataka. Everyone who knows the state says that communal prejudices and anxieties have made deep inroads in the public mind. But one thing is certain that the voters of Karnataka are not taking this issue forward in this election.
This is in sharp contrast to what I heard while traveling during the 2022 Uttar Pradesh elections. Almost every Hindu voter in the state, even those who voted for the Samajwadi Party (SP), spoke about Security (patronage) With a communal colour. In Karnataka, even Muslims who are victims of state-sponsored radicalization do not raise the issue. There is an untold disquiet, a pressure to prove one’s nationalism, an eagerness to underline communal unity. For Hindus, the communal issue has slipped in their order of priority; For Muslims, it is a decision to push it down. I doubt that the BJP’s desperate and predictable attempt to stoke the communal temperature will change this basic fact in the last week before the elections.
There is a strange emptiness that marks the streets in the run-up to elections in Karnataka. You don’t see any huge billboards; There’s no wall writing, very few flexes, and rarely do you see a promotional vehicle. Elections have gone underground, and apparently more expensive than ever. They say it costs you around Rs 10 crore to lose the assembly elections in Karnataka; The cost of winning a seat is around Rs 20-40 crore, if not more. No party shies away from this game, even if the BJP is overtaking the Congress. Street gossip is about who’s bought whom, who’s defected, and who’s about to let whom down. Normal business of what we call a democracy.
Yet, an invisible hand—or maybe four of them—are fanning Air It feels like a cool Bengaluru evening breeze after the scorching sun. All signs point to an electoral mandate that can counter the supremacist power. As they say, disagreement is like water. It finds its way.
Yogendra Yadav is one of the founders of Jai Kisan Andolan and Swaraj India. He tweeted @_YogendraYadav. Thoughts are personal.
(Edited by Hamra Like)