BA PDF Symposium 2006

26 April 2006

Abstracts

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Dr Alastair McMillan

How India Votes

The Indian General Election of 2004 saw the Congress Party emerge as the winner, at the head of a large coalition of parties. This paper examines the reasons for the defeat of the BJP government in 2004, and the different patterns of voting across the Indian States. It draws on a large scale survey of the Indian electorate, carried out after the votes had been cast, but before the election results were known. This provides insight into the relationship between political attitudes, socio-economic factors, and voter choice.


Dr Alastair McMillan holds a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship at Nuffield College, Oxford. He has worked on Indian and UK politics, and last year published Standing at the Margins: Representation and Electoral Reservation in India (OUP, New Delhi) and (with Iain McLean) State of the Union: Unionism and the Alternatives in the United Kingdom since 1707 (OUP, Oxford).