Emotional messaging and appeals form an integral aspect of electoral campaigning across the world. Emotions in electoral politics have been known to play multiple roles including that of shaping voter attitudes and impacting voter choices. The rise of populism in electoral politics has witnessed strengthening of emotion based political mobilization across the world. Political leaders are known to make use of wide array of emotions including fear, anxiety, despair, hate, anger, joy and even humor to appeal to the electorate. Drawing on this present moment of emotion heavy electoral narrative, this paper investigates the way emotions have been leveraged in election campaigns in India. It does so through a perusal of election related speeches of popular leaders of some of the prominent national and state parties in India. The paper argues that emotions are a part of political marketing strategies used by political parties. Speeches and images are carefully curated for a target audience. Further the very nature of emotion which includes aspects of performance and being performed upon leads to parties constantly adjusting emotional appeals in response to changing voter feedback. Emotional appeals are also customized spatially and temporally as reflected in sub-national and local level elections. Secondly, the paper argues that electoral campaigning since independence, has taken on newer contours which are radical and polarizing in nature and often pitched in the form of binaries such as vernacular and elite. Finally, the paper looks at how the register of emotions as reflected in campaigning in India may be contrasted with that of other countries. The paper argues that we can think of a more universal theorization regarding how emotions are critical to election campaigning. This is because as issues and ideologies become less relevant, emotional appeals delivered by charismatic leaders will be critical in electoral mobilization
