Elections in India are notable for their volatility; voters’ choices are notoriously difficult to predict, with large swings from one election to the next. Adding to this uncertainty is the fact that historically, party brands are weak and official party membership is low. It is no wonder then that partisanship has not featured prominently in discussions of contemporary Indian politics. In political science parlance, the term “partisanship” is used to describe the stable and emotional attachment that some voters feel toward political parties. This emotional attachment, which transcends mere support for the party at the ballot, is prevalent among voters in most parts of the world and affects political discourse and behaviour in fundamental ways.
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In India, the idea of partisanship has received little attention, and yet “Bhajpaai,” “Comrade,” or “Congressi” are frequently used to describe party loyalists across the political spectrum. These terms reflect a belief that at least some people have entrenched partisan affiliations. Anecdotal evidence too suggests that party loyalty is rising, with an increasing share of voters self-identifying with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and social media echo chambers polarising political debates. As Indians head to the polls to select a new Lok Sabha, we examine Indians’ deep-rooted partisanship which, contrary to received wisdom, is a significant part of everyday political life.
Why Partisanship Matters
Measuring partisanship involves asking people about their self-identification into party camps. Hence, the most common survey question to measure such attachment is simply: “Which party do you identify with?” Other times, voters are asked whether there is a party they feel close to or how they feel about different parties. In some studies, researchers have also tried to experimentally tease out the strength of individuals’ partisan attachment. Several decades of research suggest that partisan attachment remains surprisingly stable over time, even when parties or individuals change their policy positions.
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These lasting attachments influence several outcomes in the political space. Three in particular are worth mentioning.
First, partisans are believed to be loyal voters, meaning that parties can be reasonably certain that these voters will turn out and support them on the election day. This makes elections more predictable and allows parties and politicians to focus on developing long-term policy platforms rather than spending resources on short-term, populist measures to sway voters.
Second, partisanship shapes how people understand the political world by serving as a heuristic to interpret political information. People tend to believe that if their party views an issue favourably, then they too should hold a similar view. Therefore, parties play a role in shaping opinions, which can make it easier for voters to follow key debates and hold elected representatives accountable.
Third, partisanship shapes how people interpret the information they receive. Those who feel attached to parties are more likely to be biased in favour of whatever the party does. They are often more willing to ignore negative information about their party and more likely to pounce on negative information about other parties. This bias, often referred to as motivated reasoning, hampers objective evaluation and can increase hostility between groups. Scholars of partisan polarisation are concerned about increasingly siloed camps, arguing that this may further enhance distrust and stymie political deliberation.
Studies from the United Kingdom, Europe, and several other democratic contexts attest to the global relevance of partisanship. Voters tend to self-sort into party camps even in the presence of more than two parties and in systems with proportional representation. However, all of these polities share one key similarity: The political party system is well-institutionalised. Such parties are stable entities with clearly defined ideological profiles, which helps boost party attachment. Nevertheless, even in less-institutionalised contexts such as Brazil, Turkey, Argentina, Mexico, and Taiwan, there is a growing belief that partisanship plays an important role in shaping democratic competition.
Partisanship in India
In India, as in other contexts characterised by unstable and unpredictable voting patterns, partisanship may not appear to matter at first glance. Indeed, the very presence of high electoral volatility—a measure of vote swings between parties across elections—seems to suggest that voters do not stay loyal to any one party.
Still, when asked about political preferences, many voters express clear partisan loyalties. We observed several instances of this in Himachal Pradesh before the 2022 state assembly elections. Most memorably, a group of women in the Shimla rural district were keen to discuss their individual party preferences, making sure to highlight how these differed from the rest of their families’. Even after marrying into families with different partisan preferences, these women held onto their own partisan opinions.
Such attitudes are also visible at the aggregate level. Figure 1 tracks the presence of partisanship across India, drawing on data from the National Election Studies (NES). Each election cycle, survey respondents were asked: “Is there any political party you particularly feel close to?” Across elections, around 30% of survey respondents expressed partisan attachments. This is lower than large democracies such as the United States, but similar to levels observed in democracies in Latin America, such as Brazil.
What is striking is the relative stability of partisanship despite periods of massive political shifts. In the 50-year period in question, the Indian political system has moved from single-party dominance under the Congress to a more fragmented party system marked by coalition rule and then back to a party system dominated by the BJP.
This raises the question: Which parties do voters feel especially close to? In India, a huge number of parties contest elections, but few of them survive more than one electoral cycle. As Figure 2 demonstrates, a vast majority of parties that contested national elections in India between 1962 and 2019 participated in only one general election. Of course, some parties have exhibited staying power, and many of them have developed unique party brands. Most prominent are the Congress and the BJP. NES data from 2019 indicate that more than half of the self-identified partisans across India report feeling close to either the Congress (19.2%) or the BJP (41.2%). Other parties with footholds in a particular state — such as the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh or the Trinamool Congress in Bengal — also have partisans, but since their support is regionally concentrated, none of them were named by more than 5% of partisan loyalists at the national level.
Figure 3 looks at how partisanship varies by individual-level characteristics, using data from an original field survey we conducted in Himachal Pradesh in 2022. In a random sample of 3,200 respondents, the overall level of partisanship was 52%. The results showed that women, members of the Scheduled Castes, and those with limited media exposure were less likely to express a partisan attachment.
How Partisanship Matters
There is compelling evidence that partisanship exists in India, but how might it matter for elections? In line with studies from other parts of the world, survey data indicate that Indian partisans are substantively different from nonpartisan voters in three crucial respects: voting stability, informed political opinions, and biased reasoning.
The first point is related to the stability of voting patterns in Indian general elections. According to data on voters in the 2019 general elections, about 61% of partisan voters repeated their vote choice from 2014, compared to 54% of nonpartisans, and about 64% of the partisans voted for the party they said they felt close to.
It might seem underwhelming that less than two-thirds of partisans eventually voted for the party they identify with, given that many voters regularly proclaim to be party loyalists. However, this number is biased downward because parties do not always field candidates in every electoral constituency in every election cycle. When considering only constituencies where the party in question actually fielded a candidate for reelection, close to 86% of respondents supported the party they reported feeling loyal to. This signals a high degree of stability for this particular voter group.
In other parts of the world, partisanship is associated with more informed political behaviour, higher trust in parties, and more belief in the efficacy of the vote—all of which are considered signs of democratic health. There is compelling evidence for the same logic working among Indian partisans. For instance, our survey in Himachal Pradesh revealed that partisans were much more likely to express trust in political parties, far less ambiguous about political choices, and better at deciphering issue ownership among parties. Notably, partisanship is associated with these traits even when education, media exposure, and political interest were held constant.
Although stable partisanship might be a sign of democratic vibrancy, it also has its downsides, namely partisan polarisation. Many studies outside of India find that greater consolidation along party lines and a shrinking middle ground are linked to an increase in partisan animus between groups. While there is no systematic data from India on the levels of animosity between supporters of the two main poles in India — the Congress and the BJP — there is increasing evidence that party identities have a marked effect on co-partisans’ worldview. For instance, a recent survey of young, urban-dwelling Indians found evidence of substantial co-partisan bias: Partisan respondents attached to either the Congress or the BJP exhibited little agreement over politically coloured issues such as India’s G20 presidency or even about supposedly objective issues related to population growth and current economic conditions.
Expressing negative feelings toward another party, commonly called “negative partisanship,” is another way in which researchers detect partisan animus. Typically measured by asking respondents if there is any party that they dislike or would not support, negative partisanship is associated with negative opinions not just about the other party but also about people associated with that party. Our survey revealed that partisans were indeed more likely to express negative partisanship; compared to nonpartisans, they were twice as likely to name parties they would never support. However, disaggregated by partisan identity, the picture is more nuanced. Only 26.4% of the BJP partisans and 20.5% of Congress partisans expressed a strong distaste for other parties. This signals less partisan rigidity than one might expect, indicating that unmitigated political polarisation is perhaps not as widespread as commonly believed.
Conclusion
Despite claims to the contrary, partisanship plays a significant role in Indian elections. High levels of electoral volatility and ubiquitous party switching conceal the presence of partisan loyalties among a substantial share of Indian voters. The stabilisation of political competition, featuring a similar set of parties running in election after election, has the potential for further fostering partisanship in India.
Extant data indicate that heightened partisanship can translate into more informed, engaged voters who demand greater accountability from their elected leaders. Fostering such partisanship also has clear advantages for political parties, since partisan voters tend to be steadfast and decisive in their opinions and actions. In the current context, this means that parties that enjoy substantive partisanship, such as the BJP, can be confident of their future prospects.
At the same time, intensely held partisan identities risk hampering deliberative democracy. Unchecked bias — particularly during election times — can cloud voter judgements. To translate partisan sentiments into healthy political engagement, India will need to ensure the free flow of reliable political information as well as open political debates in which supporters of competing political camps engage with those espousing alternative viewpoints. By discouraging such engagement, the current political climate runs the risk of creating belligerent camps, thereby undermining the positive potential of partisanship.
Ankita Barthwal is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Oslo. Francesca Refsum Jensenius is a professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Oslo. In the months ahead, the Carnegie-HT “India Elects 2024” series will analyse various dimensions of India’s upcoming election battle—including the role foreign policy plays, the impact of women voters, and the evolution of conservative parties.
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