Processing of party symbols and names predicts the results of 2019 Indian parliamentary election: Analysing psycholinguistic behavioural incongruency effects

Abstract The response time and accuracy of processing verbal and nonverbal stimuli may predict the desired outcome of an event. Few studies have examined the psycholinguistic evidence of the speed-accuracy trade-off in the processing of political information to predict the outcome of an election. Therefore, we analysed the perceptual time and accuracy of two major political party names: the Indian National Congress (INC) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and their respective symbols before the Indian election 2019. Our results demonstrated that the pre-election perceptual accuracy to party symbol and name was positively linear to the index of high proportional vote share of the winning party, BJP. The high response accuracy and time for the BJP name correlated with voters’ familiarity of it, thereby establishing a link between response results and parties’ vote shares.