Not-for-profit Daksh recently conducted a massive survey in Karnataka which tried to understand voter preferences, evaluate MLA performance, etc. This was a comprehensive survey covering over 12000 voters across all districts in Karnataka. Apart from capturing demographic information, the survey asks questions on what candidates look for in a candidate and what issues they think are important for an MLA.
One of the questions asked was the importance of a candidate’s caste when it comes to voting. Voters were asked to indicate if it was “very important”, “important” or “not important”. For purpose of my analysis I’ve given a score of 1 for “very important” and 0.5 for “important” and 0 for “not important”. The relationship between a voter’s annual family income with his perception on the importance of caste is extremely interesting, as this graph indicates.
