The extraordinary findings of a News18 post-poll survey are set to shatter long-held beliefs about how the Muslim community in India votes against the backdrop of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
Counting day is just hours away and several parties are banking on the Muslim community’s backing to notch up impressive numbers.
State of states
According to the data, other than in Kerala and Bihar, where the Congress overshadows the Bharatiya Janata Party among Muslims, the rest of the states don’t show that kind of polarisation. In Uttar Pradesh, the BJP (20%) seems to have had more Muslim support than the Congress (17%), and the same seems to be the case in Odisha (35% for BJP vs 28% for Congress).
In Chhattisgarh, the Muslims have split evenly between the Congress and the BJP (47% each). At the national level, there is 18% support from the community for the BJP vs 32% for the Congress.
According to the survey, there is higher acceptability (over 25%) for the BJP in states like Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Assam, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, UP, Odisha, and Tamil Nadu.
It is interesting to note that the gap between Muslims who back the BJP vs those who back the Congress in many demographies is just about 10-15% only. In very few demographies is this gap very wide.
The survey has an all-India sample size of 11,371. A total of 6,472 of the respondents were men and 4,899 were women.
How men vote
Among Muslim men who indicated they preferred the BJP, the highest percentage were white-collar workers.
21% of all Shia respondents and 15% Sunnis backed the BJP with the respective figures being 31% and 33% for the Congress.
What do women want?
There is a higher preference for the BJP among less-literate Muslim women and more preference for the Congress among graduates.
The highest preference for the BJP is among Muslim women who indicated they were non-agricultural workers. This is even more than the preference for the Congress. There is a high preference for the BJP among Muslim women in business and trader communities too.
Among all Muslim women polled, the less literate and poorer seem to be more inclined towards the BJP, probably because they are benefitting from the “labharthi schemes” rolled out by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
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