The AAP’s brute majority in Punjab has largely been made possible by its spectacular performance in the Malwa region where the AAP won 66 of 69 seats. It had been the epicentre of the farmers’ movement in Punjab for more than a year and had seen an active participation of farmers and influential farmer organisations in protests and demonstrations not just in the State but also on the borders of Delhi. Lokniti’s post-poll survey finds that even as the AAP had a huge lead over its opponents among both farmers and those not connected with farming, it did slightly better statewide among the farmer community receiving 44% of their support as opposed to its overall vote share of 42%.
This slightly higher than average performance by AAP among farmers was however only due to the enormous support the party received from the farming households of the Malwa region.
In the region, half the voters belonging to households that had someone or the other engaged in farming voted for AAP as opposed to a little less than a majority among voters belonging to households where no member was into farming or allied activities. This gap was only visible in the Malwa region and not in the other two regions of the State — Majha and Doaba. Here more non-farming community voters than farming community voters voted for the AAP.
Majha and Doaba regions
In Doaba, the AAP did 6 percentage points worse among voters of farming households than among those from non-agricultural households. It was the Congress in fact that did better among the farmers here than the AAP. In the Majha region too, the pattern was more or less the same. Here the Akalis too cornered a significant share of the farming community vote and the contest between the AAP, Congress and SAD among farming households could be deemed as a much tighter one, even though the AAP enjoyed a small lead. It is interesting, in fact, that the Akalis, who faced a lot of flak during the farmers’ movement for their initial support to the farm laws, did not do as badly among them in Majha as they did among farmers elsewhere.
Data indicate that lthough the AAP enjoyed a comfortable lead among voters from farming households that supported the farmers’ movement (a huge 84% were found to be in support), its lead was even bigger among the small minority of farming households (12%) who were not in support of the movement. Once again, of all the 3 regions it was in Malwa that the AAP secured the biggest lead among voters from farming households who supported the movement. In Doaba, it did not lead among this section and in Majha while it did lead among the movement’s backers it was not to the same extent as Malwa.
It could be concluded, therefore, that the farmers’ movement did help the AAP but its impact on voting choices was mostly limited to Malwa region, where the desire for change was not just limited to farmers but non-farmers as well. The farmers’ movement may have been a catalyst for change in Punjab but it wasn’t a major determining factor as far as voting choices are concerned.
Shreyas Sardesai and Aamir Raza are with Lokniti-CSDS; Sandeep Shastri is the Vice Chancellor, Jagran Lakecity University Bhopal and the National Co-ordinator of the Lokniti network
