The Impact of Political Campaigns, Social Media, and Voter Behaviour on Electoral Outcomes in Rohtak: A Comparative Study of the 2024 Elections
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1Vishesh Dangi
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DOI :
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Research Scholar Baba Mastnath University, Rohtak, Haryana, India
The 2024 Indian general election in the
Rohtak parliamentary constituency of Haryana produced a decisive reversal of
the 2019 outcome: Deepender Singh Hooda of the Indian National Congress
defeated the sitting Bharatiya Janata Party member, Dr Arvind Kumar Sharma, by
a margin of 345,298 votes (62.9 per cent vote share), compared with a
razor-thin 7,503-vote BJP win in 2019. This paper examines the extent to which
political campaigning, social media communication and voter-behaviour dynamics
contributed to this swing, situating the Rohtak case within the wider
comparative literature on digital campaigning in the 2019 and 2024 Lok Sabha
elections. Drawing on Election Commission of India constituency data, official
campaign chronology reported in the national press, and a synthesis of recent
peer-reviewed studies on social media and Indian electoral behaviour, the paper
develops a conceptual model linking campaign exposure, social-media usage and
political communication (independent variables) through political awareness,
trust and engagement (mediators) to voting decisions and electoral outcomes
(dependent variables), moderated by age, gender, education and rural/urban
residence. A mixed-methods research design combining a structured voter survey,
key-informant interviews and social-media content analysis is proposed for
empirical testing of the model in Rohtak. Because a completed voter survey for
Rohtak was not available at the time of writing, the paper stops short of
reporting primary statistical results; instead it presents the verified
secondary evidence, the theoretical and conceptual apparatus, and a fully
specified methodology, and flags precisely which sections require the author’s
own field data before the manuscript can be submitted to a Scopus, Web of
Science or UGC-CARE-indexed journal. The paper contributes a constituency-level
analytical framework for studying digital political communication in a
family-dominated, semi-urban north Indian seat, and offers practical and policy
recommendations on digital literacy, platform regulation and campaign
transparency.
