Beginning today and over this week, The Hindu will publish a series of articles explaining the verdicts in the four States — West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Assam — and the Union Territory of Puducherry that went to the polls in March-April 2021, according to a special post-poll survey conducted by the Lokniti-CSDS for The Hindu. These data-based articles will detail the key issues that mattered to the electorate, the specificities in each of the States that had a bearing on the results, and the variables that determined the survey respondents’ choices.

In the opening article, the survey found that the “local” was of utmost importance in the decision-making of voters. Each of the surveyed States had specific local variables that swayed and determined the choices of the respondents. Voters seemed to be determining their electoral choice for State and national elections distinctly, something that’s been a growing trend.

The question was put to respondents of whether they felt that for the development of their State, it was necessary that the party in power at the Centre should be the ruling party in their State too. More than half the respondents in Kerala fully disagreed with this statement while in Tamil Nadu, four of every 10 respondents took this stand. Given the sharp polarisation in West Bengal, close to one-thirds of the respondents fully disagreed with this statement. It was only in Assam that four of 10 respondents strongly agreed with the statement. In the southern States, it was very clear that voters saw little merit in the same party being in power at both levels while the jury was more divided in the east.

Another interesting trend: if the results of the present post-poll survey are compared with those of the post-poll survey conducted after the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the net satisfaction with the performance of the State government has increased and is uniformly high.

These articles are accompanied by a methodological note on how the survey was conducted, the sample size for each State and the method used to weight responses based on the composition of the voters. These detailed post-poll surveys are key to helping us understand how voters are thinking and in piecing together a larger trajectory of how our politics are evolving and changing. The opening article in this series is, therefore, our top pick of the day.
 

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When was the last time an incumbent government came back to power in Kerala?

1. 1977

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4. 1988
 

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