How to Win an Election
The evil genius of the BJP’s win in UP
I hate personality cults and words like “Big Narrative” that people actively use to explain away things because its their job to do so. I find that deconstructing something into fundamental truths and being a hyperrealist helps me make peace with myself and reduce fear of the unknown. “Big narrative”, “communal politics” and “personality cult” are words flung around by lazy journalists in describing BJP’s victory in Uttar Pradesh. How did an election that was predicted to yield a hung assembly turn around resoundingly in favour of the BJP? I do not believe that a single election in the history of democracy was won on policy details and efficiency of governance, and I don’t think you or the journalists believe that either. I believe that its effective persuasion that wins an election.
Effective Persuasion
Elections never result in objective, rational decision making. Like a brand that gets you to buy something you don’t want at a price that you cant afford, the most effective persuader manipulates public opinion to win. The master stroke comes in making you believe that the decision to buy/vote was an act of free will.
There are three sinister, but ingenious ways the BJP used persuasion principles, to win the crucial Uttar Pradesh election. I will use examples from Robert Cialdini’s “Influence — The Psychology of Persuasion” to explain these.
Social proof or my blind belief in the wisdom of the crowd
“After a class session in which the subject of discussion was the principle of social proof, he stayed to talk with me. He said that he now understood the cause of a type of traffic accident that had always puzzled him before. The accident typically occurred on the city freeway during rush hour, when cars in all lanes were moving steadily but slowly. Events leading to the accident would start when a pair of cars, one behind the other, would simultaneously begin signaling an intention to get out of the lane they were in and into the next. Within seconds, a long line of drivers to the rear of the first two would follow suit, thinking that something — a stalled car or a construction barrier — was blocking the lane ahead. It would be in this crush to cram into the available spaces of the next lane that a collision frequently happened.
The odd thing about it all, according to the patrolman, was that very often there had been no obstruction to be avoided in the first place, and by the time of the accident, this should have been obvious to anyone who looked. He said he had more than once witnessed such accidents when there was a visibly clear road in front of the ill-fated lane switchers.
The patrolman’s account provides certain insights into the way we respond to social proof. First, we seem to assume that if a lot of people are doing the same thing, they must know something we don’t. Especially when we are uncertain, we are willing to place an enormous amount of trust in the collective knowledge of the crowd. Second, quite frequently the crowd is mistaken because they are not acting on the basis of any superior information but are reacting, themselves, to the principle of social proof.” — Robert Cialdini
This is the most obvious one, we all know how the opinion of our peers can affect our decision making. Products such as Zomato, Trip Advisor, and Air BnB survive on our reliance on opinion of people whom we think are similar to us.
How do you effectively use this to sway an election? The votes that can be swayed the most are those of the section of undecided voters. The ones who are on the fence till the last moment. Social scientists have shown that in an election, a voter who is undecided would prefer to vote for whom he thinks will win the election, irrespective of what his political opinion is. Thus in a scenario where undecided voters are more than 20%, they will dictate the result of the election. Win them and you have a really good chance of winning the election. The long winded UP election was conducted in 7 phases. Exit polls were banned till the last phase of the election was over. This did not stop the Dainik Jagran, one of the most widely circulated newspapers in UP from producing an exit poll after phase one of the election. It predicted a huge win for BJP. Although the newspaper was forced to withdraw the story, the news had spread like wildfire on social platforms and instant messengers. An undecided voter could be effectively swayed to vote for the BJP if she has the social proof — in this case an exit poll by one of the most popular newspapers in central India.
There is no way to prove that the exit poll was BJP orchestrated. But it would be foolish to believe that Dainik Jagran, which had one of its editors jailed for flouting election rules, would take the risk of being penalised without quid pro quo.
Read the full article of the Dainik Jagran exit poll here.
Consistency or why I have to stick with my choices (even if it harms me)
“A STUDY DONE BY A PAIR OF CANADIAN PSYCHOLOGISTS UNCOVERED something fascinating about people at the racetrack: Just after placing a bet, they are much more confident of their horse’s chances of winning than they are immediately before laying down that bet. Of course, nothing about the horse’s chances actually shifts; it’s the same horse, on the same track, in the same field; but in the minds of those bettors, its prospects improve significantly once that ticket is purchased.Like the other weapons of influence, this one lies deep within us, directing our actions with quiet power. It is, quite simply, our nearly obsessive desire to be (and to appear) consistent with what we have already done. Once we have made a choice or taken a stand, we will encounter personal and interpersonal pressures to behave consistently with that commitment. Those pressures will cause us to respond in ways that justify our earlier decision.”
Political parties and analysts had predicted a “demonetisation backlash” for the BJP in the elections. In the 4 months following demonetisation, Small businesses had suffered, people had died and overall it seemed like an ill advised plan that misfired. But before all this, in the weeks following the banning of 500 and 1000 rupee notes, people across the country had vociferously supported the move. They saw it as a virtuous decision intended to reverse the plague of corruption.
The genius of this measure (intentional or not) was that it got people to be part of the action. Unlike a traditional political argument based on rhetoric, demonetisation saw people go through trouble and pain to fulfil a government policy. They stood in queues to exchange notes, suffered in silence as their they lost business and livelihood. In Uttar Pradesh, where a huge cross section of women depend on micro-finance, there was a rise in incidents of domestic abuse after husbands started discovering that their wives kept money hidden away from them. The suffering and pain that people went through strengthened their belief in demonetisation rather than weaken it. They had too much skin in the game to believe otherwise. As illustrated in the case above, it is human nature to be consistent in actions and words, after all none of us want to have the reputation of being inconsistent or fickle minded. This forces us to be consistent with our previous held views and actions we took in support of them. This can explain the perplexing story of vendors who lost almost all of their business in the aftermath of demonetisation, but still supporting it.
Creating a common enemy
This is sort of an odd one out — its not based on Cialdini’s book, but a general observation that may well apply to even Donald Trump’s election in the United states
Umberto Eco’s book “Inventing the Enemy” starts with an anecdote about an encounter with a Pakistani cab driver who asks him about his home country of Italy — “who are your enemies”? Eco was taken aback by the question, and by the assertion that a country must have enemies. After thinking about it, he realized that Italy had no outside enemies — all the enemies were from within — “Pisa against Lucca, Guelphs against Ghibellines, north against south, Fascists against Partisans, mafia against state, Berlusconi’s government against the judiciary.” (p. 2)
Eco then muses on the notion of having an enemy, making references ranging from ancient Rome to the plight of the Black man in more contemporary eras. He looks at the way Blacks are negatively painted, as well as Jews, throughout history.
He notes that enemies are necessary for identity — we define ourselves in terms of the “other”.
The BJP has done what the gods could not do, united a whole cross section of people belonging to different castes that have been at war with each other since the beginning of time, and united them against a common enemy — People who preach islam. The BJP did not field a single Muslim candidate in UP. In a state where sub castes have played a major role in swaying elections in the last two decades, BJP was able to garner votes from all cross section of the public. The strategy of BJP to further alienate the “others” is also seen in its choice of a hardline chief minister.
Do you agree with my observations or am I just someone with a hammer who sees everything as a nail?
Buy and read Robert Cialdini’s master work here
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