'British Hindu Voters and the Conservative Party: A Case Study on Leicester East.'

Abstract:

Voting behaviour and the factors that affect how groups vote vary. Historically, it was
presumed that all BME groups voted for the Labour Party because whilst in
Government, they had legislated to protect the interests of the newly migrated BME
community in the 1960s and 1970s. Based on being inspired by Mehta Binita’s 2015
opinion piece in The Telegraph titled ‘You Don’t Have to Be White To Vote Right’ Why
young Asians are rebelling against their parents and a review of literature of works
particularly by Nicole Martin, Anthony Heath and Maria Sobolweska, this dissertation
focuses on the British Hindu electorate looking at what makes the electorate vote the
way they do in elections, with a focus on the 2019 election campaign. To fulfil this
aim, this study used an online quantitative and qualitative questionnaire, sent to
Committee members of Mandirs (Hindu places of worship) in Leicester East. The
use of an online questionnaire, which mainly had quantitative questions encouraged
the Hindu electorate to anonymously discuss their politics. In this context, it shined a
light on the political interesting political changes which are happening in Leicester
East, through analysing the results by descriptive and inferential statistics and
coding.

The results had indicated leadership of political parties does have a major influence
on the Hindu electorates opinion of political parties because of the role the
revitalisation of Hindu nationalism is having, as a result of the election of the BJP in
India and the effect this is having on Indian diaspora. Results from the questionnaire
indicates this can have an influence on how the electorate vote. On this basis, it is
recommended that there should not be generalizations with how different groups in
society vote because each group varies in factors that affect them. Further research
is needed to identify if similar factors affect the same religious ethnic group, or if the
area in which they live gives the Hindu electorate different political concerns.