#79 What Do Voter Preferences Reveal?

This newsletter is really a public policy thought-letter. While excellent newsletters on specific themes within public policy already exist, this thought-letter is about frameworks, mental models, and key ideas that will hopefully help you think about any public policy problem in imaginative ways. It seeks to answer just one question: how do I think about a particular public policy problem/solution?

Welcome to the mid-week edition in which we write essays on a public policy theme. The usual public policy review comes out on weekends.

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- RSJ

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in partnership with the research and analytics firm YouGov conducted the Indian American Attitudes Survey (IAAS) between September 1 and September 20, 2020. Sumitra Badrinathan, Devesh Kapur and Milan Vaishnav now have a paper titled ‘How Will Indian Americans Vote’ based on this survey that has a few interesting conclusions. 

The study is useful to test a few hypotheses that have emerged in India in the past few years. These include:

* Indian Americans have nudged closer to the Republicans on the back of Trump-Modi chemistry. The enthusiasm for PM Modi among NRIs and among BJP supporters in India for Trump has created a positive self-reinforcing cycle for both.

* Most Indian Americans have turned conservative over time going by their stand on domestic issues in India. This is drawn from the views of many vocal Indian Americans on social media platforms and the anecdotal evidence of friends and family on WhatsApp groups supporting the conservative or majoritarian stance of this regime. This has led many to assume a large defection of Indian Americans from the Democratic camp that leans liberal.

* There have been multiple instances of the Democratic leadership (Biden, Harris, Warren, Jaypal et al) being critical of India’s position on various core issues like revocation of Article 370, the clampdown in Kashmir and the handling of CAA protests. There’s been a feeling the Democrats will lose support among Indian Americans because of this.

* Lastly, Indian Americans are seen as a model minority that’s highly educated, law-abiding with twice the national average household income. Will the typical minority issues like immigration, race and identity politics animate them like they do for other minorities?

The key conclusions from the study are summarised below. It is quite an eye-opener when you consider the hypotheses outlined above.

* Indian Americans remain solidly with the Democratic Party. Recent anecdotal narratives notwithstanding, there is scant evidence that Democratic voters are defecting toward Trump and the Republican Party. Seventy-two percent of registered Indian American voters plan to vote for Biden and 22 percent intend to vote for Trump in the 2020 November election.

* Indian Americans do not consider U.S.-India relations to be one of the principal determinants of their vote choice in this election. The economy and healthcare are the two most important issues influencing the vote choice of Indian Americans, although supporters of the two parties differ on key priorities. “Kitchen table” issues dominate over foreign policy concerns.

* Indian Americans exhibit signs of significant political polarization. Just like the wider voting public, Republican and Democratic Indian American voters are politically polarized and hold markedly negative views of the opposing party and divergent positions on several contentious policy issues—from immigration to law enforcement.

* U.S.-born Indian American citizens tilt left compared to foreign-born citizens. While both U.S.-born and naturalized Indian Americans favor the Democratic Party, this tilt is more pronounced for U.S.-born Indian Americans. Political participation by naturalized citizens is more muted, however, manifesting in lower rates of voter turnout and weaker partisan identification.

* Harris has mobilized Indian Americans, especially Democrats. Harris’s vice presidential candidacy has galvanized a large section of the Indian American community to turn out to vote. On balance, while the Harris pick might not change large numbers of votes (given the community’s historic Democratic orientation), her candidacy is linked to greater enthusiasm for the Democratic ticket.

* A large section of Indian Americans view the Republican Party as unwelcoming. Indian Americans refrain from identifying with the Republican Party due, in part, to a perception that the party is intolerant of minorities and overly influenced by Christian evangelicalism. Those who identify as Republicans are primarily moved to do so because of economic policy differences with the Democrats—with particularly marked differences regarding healthcare.

* Political beliefs seep into perceptions of U.S.-India bilateral relations. Indian Americans believe Democrats do a better job of managing U.S.-India ties by a considerable margin while Republicans hold more favorable views of Modi.

Bottom line: That nationalist, majoritarian NRI friend on your WhatsApp group finds virtues in liberalism while making their electoral choice.    

Voter Apathy ≠ Political Apathy

— Pranay Kotasthane

Indian governments’ don’t do well on law and order, education, and public health. And yet there’s wide support whenever Indian governments and political parties promise new schemes to accomplish even grander things. What explains this paradox?

I have two hypotheses.

One, the political enthusiasm hypothesis. This is the reverse of the voter apathy idea. It means that the voters who have a disproportionate influence on setting the political agenda (read middle-income voters) were never apathetic to politics but only to government provision of public services.

They became apathetic towards government provision of public services because rising incomes meant that they could substitute the missing services with their own private solutions. Having done that, politics became a means to achieve other outcomes — those unrelated to market failures. Voting apathy never meant political apathy.

See this from the Exit, Voice, Loyalty thesis. Loyalty makes exit difficult. So the median Indian voter never really exited from Indian politics and instead chose to voice concerns unrelated to government provision of basic services.

My second hypothesis is more charitable to the Indian voter. I call it the expanding moral arc thesis. It is based on the book The Moral Arc by Michael Shermer. The book argues that the moral arc is continuously expanding because of science and reason.

The key insight for us is that Indian politics is being played out in the background of this increasing moral arc. This makes the Indian developmental challenge possibly more moral but definitely less fast. The inequality narrative in India is a reflection of this expanding moral arc. The government’s role in India is seen as a moral project, not a utilitarian one and hence we are okay to give its record on fixing market failures a free pass.

(Originally published at express.thinkpragati.com on April 2, 2019)

HomeWork

Reading and listening recommendations on public policy matters

* [Article] Systematic Inequality and American Democracy by Danyelle Solomon, Connor Maxwell, and Abril Castro published by the Centre for American Progress

* [Article] David Brooks on social trust and moral convulsions in America

* [Video] This discussion on Raghuram Rajan’s The Third Pillar: How Markets and the State Leave the Community Behind is worth a watch. It will make you think harder about the distinct roles of the state, markets, and the community.

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