Mood of First-Time Voter: 42% of South India prays more than once a week, 25% of East claims to be extremely religious

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 5 and 16 December, 2018. There was a total of 1,332 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: 1)  Politics and Ideology 2)  News and Media 3) Religion 4) Jobs and Economy The second part of the section titled ‘Religion’ examines the differing views of respondents from the North, South, East and West. A quarter of respondents from the East identified as being extremely religious, while eight percent of those from the West claimed to be extremely non-religious. While 20 percent of the respondents from the East said they visited a place of worship more often than once a week (18 percent each in the North and South), 10 percent of those from the East claimed to never visit places of worship. Half of the respondents from the East opined that religion plays a role in their choice of clothes, compared to 40, 43 and 37 percent in the North, South and West respectively. When it comes to doing business, only 37 percent of respondents from the West felt religion influences their dealings, compared to 44, 41 and 46 percent in the North, South and West respectively. To read the findings of the section of the survey titled 'Politics and Ideology', click here . To read the findings of the section of the survey titled 'News and Media', click here .