Gender to education and income: India's political gap is narrowing

Right versus Left phenomenon appears to be playing out differently in India

Until 1996, Americans in rural and urban areas voted similarly in elections pitting the country’s two main parties against each other. Now, rural America is more likely to support Republicans and urban areas Democrats.

The Right versus Left phenomenon may be playing out differently in India where divides based on region, gender, education and income appear flattening.

The analysis looked at numbers from the World Political Cleavages and Inequality database, which tracks surveys on political attitudes in more than 40 countries. It examined support for Left parties across different categories of voters. The analysis covers the latest available figures for India and its peers among large economies and emerging markets.

In major countries, the Left has had higher support among women. The difference between the share of Indian women and men voting for the Left was 1.8 percentage points in 2010-20, compared to 3 percentage points in the 1990s. The latest internationally comparable India data is for 2014. In the United States, voting for the Left was 5.4 percentage points higher among women than men in 2010-20. The gap was 3.2 percentage points in the United Kingdom and 1.2 percentage points in France in the same period. Japan had higher support for the Left among men as seen in chart 1.

Between 2010 and 2020, Left parties drew greater support from the richest 10 per cent Indians in elections. The difference between the rich and the bottom 90 per cent of Indians was 5.8 percentage points. The trend was different before: Data for the 1990s is unavailable but the gap was -6.5 percentage points in 2000-09 (chart 2).

By education level, the bottom 90 per cent of Indians voted more for the Left than the top 10 per cent between 2010 and 2020. This is true for two-third of the countries in the database’s sample. The gap between the two education groups in India narrowed to -4.8 percentage points in 2010-20, from -11.6 per cent in the 1990s (chart 3).

In rural India, the share of people who voted for Left parties was 3.1 percentage points higher than in urban areas in 2010-20. The lead has reduced and studies in 2019 found a rightward shift among rural voters. Rural support for the Left was 10.8 percentage points higher than urban in the 1990s.

A rightward shift in the country’s politics holds for women and the less educated. The flattening of divides may reflect the adoption of welfare programmes by parties, including those considered to lean toward the Right. Support for the BJP is said to have extended across the poor and the rich in 2019; based at least partly on various benefit schemes.