Mood of First-Time Voter: 19% in West not registered to vote; education biggest issue in East, corruption in South

The Lok Sabha election in a few months is set to see a massive 130 million first-time voters go to the polls. The stakes are already high for the National Democratic Alliance that seeks to secure five more years and a seemingly united Opposition that seeks to dislodge the ruling BJP and its allies at any cost.

To get a better idea of how young first-time voters — people aged 18 to 21 — perceive of the forthcoming election, YouGov India and Firstpost conducted a nationwide survey between 3 and 9 January. There was a total of 1,324 respondents, from a panel of over 40,000, who answered questions ranging from politics and jobs, to religion and the media. The findings are being serialised in four sections:

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1) Politics and Ideology
2) Jobs and Economy
3) Religion and Community
4) News and Information

The second part of the section titled 'Politics and Ideology' looks at how the North South, East and West view politics.

According to the survey, the largest percentage of unregistered voters came from the West Zone, where almost a fifth of all respondents said they had not registered to vote. In contrast, both the North and South recorded only 12 percent who were not registered voters. While nearly a third of respondents from the North, South and West zones claimed that the excitement of going to the polls would be their primary reason for voting in this year's Lok Sabha election, 30 percent of people surveyed from the East Zone cited 'the obligations of being an adult' as their primary reason to vote.

When it comes to issues that matter most, the largest groups in the North and West zones (23 and 22 percent respectively) felt women's safety was the most important. In the South, 18 percent of the respondents felt ending corruption was the most important issue, while in the East, a fifth of people surveyed felt getting better education facilities was the most important issue.