Gujarat

Governance

The aim of the study was to understand the overall awareness of people in Gujarat about political and economic issues, which in turn affects their voting decision.

The first section of the study was about personal information of the respondents followed by household information asking about their income, belongings and if they avail government schemes. This was followed by a section on political activity and engagement. The main aim was to find out about people’s participation in elections. The fourth section captured the opinion of the public about various government activities and current issues in India. The fifth section contained questions related to political and economic happenings in the country in an attempt to measure how aware and informed people are about such events. The next section was on media and it tries to understand the reach of media in the lives of the masses. The last section had hypothetical questions trying to gauge people’s willingness to take risk. This was an important section as it is helpful in understanding people’s risk-taking or avoiding tendencies which get reflected in their political decision-making as well. The whole study was an attempt to understand how informed people are and its impact on their political decision-making. The role of media is vital in this regard. The study also attempted to understand the various factors that aid the decision-making of a voter.

The sampling strategy was Stratified Sampling involving interviews with 50% male and 50% female respondents. The sample size for this study was 1700 respondents out of which 60% respondents were from urban areas and 40% respondents from rural areas. Out of 1700 respondents, 10% were Muslims, 10% SC and 10% BPL. The sampling strategy was to go to 5 districts in Gujarat and visit colonies dominated by SC, BPL and Muslim population and interview every nth household.