Is the Muslim vote becoming irrelevant to BJP's electoral success in India?

While Muslim voters' preference of other political alignments remained unchanged, upper-caste Hindus and SC-ST voters got closer to the BJP in 2014

Apart from merely being a topic of interest of researchers, it is now quite well known that differences among socio-economic groups over caste, religion, education and wealth have an inescapable impact on politics in India. The way these differences, or ‘social cleavages’, affect electoral outcomes has, however, changed in the past few elections, especially the last general election in 2014.

While the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) under the leadership of Narendra Modi, might have received support from all sections of society to be able to form a majority government in 2014, research and survey data from independent sources indicate that the 2014 elections showed both polarisation and de-polarisation across various groups.

It is likely that the BJP has been winning incrementally more upper-caste votes in recent times, even as the Muslim vote remains stagnant. The weaker sections, on the other hand, are moving closer to the BJP when compared with five previous elections, bringing nearly a parity in how they elect national leaders. Finally, education and income are becoming less and less important as indicators dictating political choices.

These inferences have been drawn from a paper published in the Economic and Political Weekly by a group of researchers including Abhijit Banerjee and Thomas Piketty. Data from Delhi-based Lokniti-CSDS (Centre for the Study of Developing Societies), a think-tank involved in political research has been used. It must be noted that these are national-level numbers, and vast differences might easily be possible at the constituency level.

The Muslim vote for various political alignments does not seem to have changed much in the past two decades. The proportion of Muslims voting for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has more or less remained the same over the past few elections, though it dropped to a low in 2009, show data from Lokniti. The Congress, on the other hand, is being preferred more and more by Muslims, and possibly, at the cost of successes of other national and regional parties.

However, if we look at the relative voting patterns of Muslims and non-Muslims to the BJP and other right-wing parties, the difference among the two is rising, the EPW paper shows. Similarly, the paper highlights this difference for upper castes. These voters preferred right-wing parties, including the BJP, only with a premium of 5-10 percentage points over lower castes. In 2014, it grew to 15-20 percentage points.

“In contrast, Muslims have become increasingly inclined to vote for centrist or left-wing parties. In the early 1960s, they were about as likely to support the right as other religious groups, while in 2014 non-Muslims were more likely to do so by 30 percentage points,” the EPW paper notes.

“While a rising share of upper castes, OBCs, and more recently SCs and STs have been attracted to the right, a stable 85 per cent to 90 per cent of Muslims have continued to vote for centrist, left-wing or other parties,” it adds.

This, when looked at in consonance with the political rhetoric of the BJP, indicates that the party might have won electoral support from upper-caste Hindus at the cost of Muslim rejection.

However, Hilal Ahmed, a professor at CSDS, said that while these numbers were indicative, it was difficult to draw final conclusions from them. “The numbers representing Muslim vote should not be confused for the broader political nature of Muslims in India. For example, despite the popular notion of BJP’s Hindutva rhetoric, the question that how 6-8 per cent of Muslims have shown their preference to BJP needs more attention,” he said.

Based on his own analysis of recent data, changes in the Muslim vote after the 2014 general elections were more telling, he added.

“In Assembly elections in the past five years, the share of Muslims voting for the BJP has increased from the natural 6-8 per cent, which is baffling,” Ahmed said.

But things become interesting when we look at seats which have a bipolar contest between the BJP and the Congress, juxtaposed with those seats which have a multipolar contest involving strong non-BJP non-Congress parties in the fray.

In a multipolar contest, the Muslim vote gets divided between the Congress and other regional/national parties’ candidates, and the BJP makes peace with just 7 per cent of the Muslim vote. In bipolar contests, on the other hand, BJP candidates stand to gain 19 per cent of the Muslim vote. Coupled with the upper-caste voters’ rising electoral preference of the BJP, this is a crucial area where the poll arithmetic might have worked for the BJP.

When it comes to votes from the weaker sections of the society — voters from Scheduled Castes (dalits) and Scheduled Tribes (adivasis) — the Congress’ appeal clearly was on the wane phase in the past two decades, Lokniti-CSDS data show.

While 38 per cent dalits voted for the Congress in 1998, only 19 per cent did so in 2014. A steady support of 12-14 per cent dalits for the BJP jumped to 24 per cent in 2014. While SC-STs’ preference of regional and other national parties was rising in this 20-year period, the 2014 elections led by Narendra Modi’s campaign, put a dent into this as well.

The gap between how differently the educated and the uneducated vote, or how the rich and the poor vote, has slowly reduced over time, the paper shows.

“Political cleavages in India’s party system have developed mostly along the lines of caste identity and religious conflict. Inequality in education, income or occupation seems to have a limited impact on political preferences,” it notes.