Kerala appears no different from other States when it comes to influence of religion and caste in any elections. As evident in the voting patterns, religion and caste wield a strong presence in Lok Sabha and Assembly polls for multiple reasons, including selection of candidates under existing political circumstances.
Even a minor shift in the voting pattern of the Ezhava and Nair communities of the Hindu segment and the Muslim and Christian communities has impacted the electoral fortunes of the United Democratic Front (UDF) and the Left Democratic Front (LDF).
Traditional votes
The previous Assembly and Lok Sabha polls show that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been able to garner a large chunk of the Nair community from the Congress-led UDF and also moderately from the Ezhava community that traditionally voted for the CPI(M)-led LDF.
Various studies on the vote share of parties and post-poll surveys, including those conducted by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), lend plausibility to the shift in votes of the communities in the elections in the State.
The UDF and the LDF have been able to secure the votes of all communities, unlike the BJP, which obviously received votes only from the Hindu community and to a certain extent from the Christians.
The studies show that in the past three Assembly polls, the LDF has been getting around 40% to 45% of the Nair votes, 30% to 39% of the Muslim votes and 27% to 35% of the Christian votes. However, the front has been losing votes of the Ezhava community from 65% to 49% when compared to the polls of 2006, 2011 and 2016.
Nair votes
Its share of votes of the Nair community plummeted to 20% in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, possibly linked to the decision of the government to implement the Supreme Court verdict allowing women of all age groups entry into the Ayyappa temple at Sabarimala. The Nair community referred in most of the studies includes upper caste Hindus.
Similarly, its vote share of the Muslim and Christian communities fell to 30% and 25% in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. One of the crucial factors was the minority support that favoured the UDF and also the projection of the Congress leader Rahul Gandhi to the post of Prime Minister.
For the UDF, it secured 20% of votes of the Nair, 28% of Ezhava, 58% of Muslim and 51% of Christian communities in the 2016 polls.
Improved vote share
However, it made a massive improvement in its vote share in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls – Nair 35%, Muslim 65%, and Christian 70%. Its share of the Ezhava community remained at 28%.
In the 2011 Assembly polls, the UDF vote share of different communities were Nair 43%, Ezhava 26%, Muslim 65% and Christian 67%.
In the case of the BJP-led National Development Alliance, it secured 33% of votes of Nair and 17% of Ezhava and 9% of Christian votes in the previous Assembly polls. The party made a jump in its Hindu votes – Nair 43 % and Ezhava 21% in 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
