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Google India released a study titled 'Urban Indian Voters' which has been compiled to understand the impact of the internet in the Loksabha elections 2014. The offline survey done by TNS for Google India, covers 108 constituencies, representing 20% of the total constituencies and underscores the role of the internet in influencing citizens when it comes to the decision to cast their votes.
The study covered 41000 people, with a focus on 7042 respondents who were registered voters in the same constituency and are active users of internet. Sixty-eight percent of the respondents were in the age group of 18-35. The study revealed, that 37% of urban Indian registered voters were already online and access the internet regularly.
Contrary to popular belief, the study found that young urban Indian voters are heavily engaged online and actively involved in the electoral process with 85% of respondents saying that they have voted in previous elections, 64% of the respondents for this question were in age group of 18-25 years. In terms of the forthcoming elections, 94% of the respondents said they will vote in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. Interestingly, a large proportion of the urban Indian registered voters (42%) were undecided about whom to vote for in the upcoming elections.
"Voters were not satisfied with the information about political candidates on the internet at this stage. They feel they will be more empowered to take decision about candidates whose information is easily available online," a press statement said. In terms of wish lists, 45% urban India voters said they would like to see more information about political parties on the internet to help them make an informed decision. Fifty-seven percent said they would like to see information on local issues. Forty-eight percent said they would like to see updates on development activities undertaken in the constituency and 43% said they wanted to see information on party manifesto.
"Over one-third of the urban Indian voters consciously start looking for elections/politics related information more than three months prior to the elections. This was in line with the search trends on Google. Elections related search queries on Google start peaking three to four months in advance and there was 500% growth in the overall query volumes during the last Lok Sabha elections. This year though with growing internet penetration, there is 800% growth in the query volume already," the statement said. Mobilephones are becoming an important source of accessing the internet with 25% election related query coming from the devices.
