An Enquiry into People's Preferences of Communist Parties in West Bengal and Kerala : Examining Electoral Data

West Bengal and Kerala are often juxtaposed with each other under a common communist identity in most scholarly and policy discourse. In this paper, we deconstruct these linkages by looking at data revealed by the election results in the two states in last five decades. In light of our observations, we show that (a) the assumed supremacy of communist preference in the two states must be diluted, and (b) the tendency to put both the states under same political basket must be revisited. Since election data is the direct reflection of people’s preferences, our paper adds an important contribution to the literature by looking at the demand side of the political market