Do Muslim voters prefer Muslim candidates? Co-religiosity and voting behaviour in India

Dynamics of Voter Satisfaction: Empirical Investigation of Young Indian Voters

“…Previous researchers have opined that the voters are more attractive to candidates who are similar to them (Blalock, 1967;Chandra, 2009;Cook, 1994;Dolan, 1998;Heath et al, 2015;Huddy & Terkildsen, 1993;Tate, 1993). More specifically, voters are more inclined to elect candidates belonging to caste and religion similar to their caste and religion.…”

“…In this regard, the construct Religious and Caste Considerations (RCC) measures the voter concerns regarding the issues related to their religion and caste. This construct is particularly important in the Indian context where the religion and caste affiliations always remain at the focal point in the voter decision making (Beg, 2017;Bhalotra et al, 2014;Harris, 2015;Heath et al, 2015;Huber & Suryanarayan, 2016;Pande, 2003). Heath et al (2015) suggested that religious affiliations affect election-related decisions of Indian voters.…”

“…This construct is particularly important in the Indian context where the religion and caste affiliations always remain at the focal point in the voter decision making (Beg, 2017;Bhalotra et al, 2014;Harris, 2015;Heath et al, 2015;Huber & Suryanarayan, 2016;Pande, 2003). Heath et al (2015) suggested that religious affiliations affect election-related decisions of Indian voters. The other researchers such as Bhalotra et al (2014), Harris (2015) and Beg (2017) also used religious identity as a factor in their study on political marketing in India and asserted that religious concerns can increase voter involvement.…”

“…In the Indian context, the researchers have paid little attention to understand young Indian voters (Joshi & Kunduri, 2017). The earlier studies have ordinarily focused on general issues such as party performance, election campaigns, media involvement and election results (Beg, 2017;Bhalotra, Clots-Figueras, Cassan, & Iyer, 2014;Harris, 2015;Heath, Verniers, Kumar, 2015;Kapur & Nangia, 2015;Vaishnav & Swanson, 2015). In majority of the earlier studies, the results are based on past election data (Bhalotra et al, 2014;Harris, 2015;Heath et al, 2015;Kapur & Nangia, 2015;Vaishnav & Swanson, 2015;Beg, 2017).…”

Electoral incentives for cross-ethnic voting: evidence from a natural experiment

“…One of the most controversial issues in the literature on electoral behaviour is whether, and under what circumstances, people tend to vote on the basis of their ascriptive identitiesespecially ethnic identitiesrather than to choose parties and candidates that match their political beliefs and preferences (see, e.g., Lau and Redlawsk, 2006;Achen and Bartels, 2016;Arzheimer et al, 2017: Part 2). In particular, scholars have explored the question of whether citizens with a specific ethnic identity tend to support their respective ethnic parties and/or co-ethnic candidates (Wolfinger, 1965;Parenti, 1967;Stokes-Brown, 2006;Birnir 2007;Dunning and Harrison, 2010;McConnaughy et al, 2010;Hoffman and Lang, 2013;Fisher et al, 2015;Heath et al, 2015;Portmann and Stojanović, 2019). If they do, are such patterns of ethnic votingalso called 'ethnic bloc voting' (Ishiyama, 2012), 'census elections' (Horowitz, 1985(Horowitz, , 1991Chandra, 2005;Ferree, 2006;Birnir, 2007) and 'ethnic headcount' (Hoffman and Long, 2013)beneficial or detrimental to democracy?…”