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Maximum campaigning in Andhra Pradesh: from padayatra to Facebook and YouTube

ABSTRACT Political campaigning in 2019 in Andhra Pradesh took place against the backdrop of a recent (2014) bifurcation of the state and increasing fragmentation of its party system. The campaign focussed on two powerful leaders of regional political parties: Chandrababu Naidu, the incumbent Chief Minister and leader of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), and Jagan Mohan Reddy, the opposition leader and founder of the YSR Congress Party (YSRCP). The YSRCP won the election by some 11 percentage points ahead of Naidu’s TDP, and achieved a landslide in seats in the Assembly and Lok Sabha. The major catalyst for Jagan’s victory was his 14-month padayatra (walkathon) across the state, during which he met millions of people in their villages, with his images and speeches consistently featured on local TV, and his campaign’s signature emotional appeal and poll promises popularized on YouTube and Facebook. The YSRCP’s campaign was managed by India’s foremost professional political consultancy, the I-PAC, which implemented a series of online and off-line campaigns and mass outreach programmes months before the election, and brought together musicians and writers to create the most popular campaign song to date. This campaign offers an insightful example of how home-grown political consulting is transforming election campaigns in India.