In Goa, the candidate has always mattered more to the voters than the party. The same trend was reflected in the 2022 Assembly elections too. In the CSDS-Lokniti post-poll survey, close to two-thirds of the voters said they considered the candidate while making their vote choice. This is nine percentage points higher than in 2017. This explains the instability of voter loyalty to parties. On the other hand, close to three in every 10 (29%) voters said that the party was more important for them than the candidate.
When voters said that the candidate was more important than the party, which attributes of the candidate were they looking at? Among those who voted along candidate lines, close to three-fourths said they assessed the work or performance of the candidate whereas close to seven in 10 (69%) said they focused on the educational qualifications of the candidate. Another three-fifths (58%) said they considered the personality of the candidate.
In the main question on voting considerations, caste emerged as an important factor for the voters while making their vote choice — in fact, slightly more so in comparison to the other States that went to the polls. But once voters preferred the candidate over the party, not many said that they look at the candidate’s caste — or so they claimed. Caste or religion become the least preferred attribute of the candidates (Table 1).
The Aam Aadmi Party and the Revolutionary Goans Party got many votes on party lines irrespective of who their candidate was. In the case of those who voted for other parties, the candidate of the party was a more important consideration than the party. For close to seven in every 10 voters of the Trinamool Congress and Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party alliance as well as the Congress, candidates were more important than any other factor while voting (Table 2).
The Bharatiya Janata Party performed relatively better among those who voted along party lines. Its gap over the Congress narrowed among those who voted on candidate lines. The emphasis on candidates over party was higher in South Goa than in the North. Incidentally, the Congress did well among the candidate-centric voters in South Goa (Table 3).
Jyoti Mishra and Chanda Rani are researchers at Lokniti-CSDS
