Making promises to voters in the run up to elections is a standard practice; a legitimate route for political parties to reach out to the electorate. But now political parties have gone a step ahead. Guarantees have replaced promises. In a way, the move away from promises to guarantees signals an increasing electoral competition. While political parties may come up with a specific package of guarantees, what matters more is voters’ trust in the promises made by different political parties. The findings of the pre-poll survey conducted by the CSDS help us make sense of this. In fact, the BJP ran a campaign titled ‘Modi sarkar ki Guarantee’ and the Prime Minister repeatedly assured that his guarantees would be honoured.
‘Interesting patterns’
In Mr. Modi’s versus Mr. Gandhi’s guarantees, it appears that voters are not very much enthused by showers of guarantees as only a small slice of voters expressed a lot of trust in either. With 23% of voters having a lot of trust in Mr. Modi’s guarantees as against 17% in Mr. Gandhi’s guarantees, the BJP has only a slight advantage over the Congress.
