DALES – Indian Election Study 2024 (IES 2024) is a nationwide survey that interviewed over 35,000 voters across 20 states in face-to-face interactions. This comprehensive effort aims to create a detailed portrait of the Indian electorate, exploring diverse areas such as electoral preferences, access to welfare, and political leadership.

The survey has sections on electoral Preferences, access to welfare schemes/benefits, political leadership, perceptions of voters, citizenship, media usage and tailored questions for the states. It aims to probe deep into themes of nationalism, secularism, federalism, and the impact of misinformation, all contextualized through the voters’ social positions. By addressing these fundamental aspects of Indian society, IES 2024 seeks to capture the nuanced dimensions of Indian democracy.

As the first large-scale academic survey of its kind to be made freely available in the public domain, DALES-IES 2024 is a collaborative initiative among academics, practitioners, and fieldworkers. It not only provides access to raw data but also integrates experiences and insights from its execution. Special emphasis is placed on the field staff, whose dedication in complex and uncertain environments made this significant undertaking feasible. In focusing on stories from the field, we want to center the efforts of our field staff, who often did this work in extremely difficult and uncertain circumstances, and made this mammoth effort possible.