BJP Second Most-Preferred Party Among Muslims: Survey

A CSDS-Lokniti pre-poll survey conducted in the last week of March has found that 26 per cent of Muslims favour the Narendra Modi government, making it almost the second most-preferred choice for the community.

The survey was conducted among 10,010 respondents, 13 per cent of them Muslims, spread across 19 states.

The BJP has nurtured an anti-Muslim image, largely because of its reluctance to control violent Hindutva politics. Expectedly, a majority of the Muslim respondents did not think the Modi government should be given another opportunity, reports The Print. But then 31 per cent Hindu respondents, too, feel the Modi government should not get another term.

Eighty-five per cent Muslims respondents said they were likely to vote in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, confirming that the prevailing anti-Muslim environment does not affect Muslim participation in elections.

According to previous CSDS-Lokniti surveys, the Congress was the first preference for Muslim voters from 1996-2009. The trend continued in 2014, too, but the BJP’s Muslim vote share increased significantly, to 9 per cent. The Assembly elections taking place in the Modi era (2014-2018) show that the BJP began to get some kind of electoral legitimacy among Muslims.

The recent pre-poll survey also confirms this trend. The Congress emerges as the main Muslim vote gainer but it does not affect the BJP’s prospects among Muslims. The survey found the BJP could get 14 per cent of Muslim votes, a 5 percentage point swing in its favour compared to 2014.

A majority of Muslims in Assam, Gujarat and Telangana clearly expressed their preference for the Congress, a trend seen also in Bihar and Maharashtra, where the Congress is in alliance with other parties.

The BJP, on the other hand, is going to get the maximum Muslim support in Rajasthan, Karnataka and Bengal, where it lacked a Muslim mass base in the past. The party is also likely to retain 14 per cent of Muslim votes in Uttar Pradesh, which is equal to the national average.

This highly diversified and apparently non-committed Muslim response signal two facts. First, political parties are made of individuals — not ideologies. In this sense, the BJP has emerged as the most powerful party, expanding its social base in every part of the country because a large number of powerful regional leaders, who had their own electoral mass base, have joined it.

The decline of the Left in Bengal and the Congress’ disintegration in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh (despite victory in the assembly elections) means that individual leaders of these parties have joined the BJP and continue to nurture their traditional Muslim support.

Second, the discourse of election, which is dominated by the anti-Muslim narrative, is different from the actual mobilisation of voters at the constituency level.