37 Per Cent of Urban Indians are Online, says Google India study

Google India has released a study titled “Urban Indian Voters”, which has been compiled to understand the impact of the Internet in the Lok Sabha elections 2014. The study covered 41,000 people, with a focus on 7,042 respondents who were registered voters in the same constituency and are active users of Internet. 68% of the respondents were in the age group of 18–35.

The study revealed that 37 per cent of the urban Indian registered voters were already online and access the Internet regularly. The study found that the young urban Indian voters are heavily engaged online and actively involved in the electoral process with 85 per cent of the respondents saying that they have voted in the previous elections. 64 per cent of the respondents for this question were in the age group of 18–25 years. In terms of the forthcoming elections, 94 per cent of the respondents said that they will vote in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. Interestingly, a large proportion of the urban Indian registered voters (42 per cent) were undecided about whom to vote for in the upcoming elections.

Rajan Anandan, Vice-President & Managing Director, Google India, said, A significant population of the registered urban Indian voters are now online and spend an equal amount of time on online and offline media. The findings reveal that the Internet will play an important role in influencing the large undecided urban Indian population in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. From Google’s perspective, we are already seeing a massive growth in elections-related search queries.

In terms of wish-list, 45 per cent urban India voters said that they would like to see more information about political parties on the Internet to help them make an informed decision.