The 15th Lok Sabha elections in India is through its half-way point and as expected turnouts in the various constituencies have been pretty strong bordering 50 percent and above. Young voters (t 18-28 years) might hold the key in some of the constituencies.

We bring you a series of digital vignettes that will hopefully give us a peek into who are these young voters, and what issues do they support?  Most of them profiled here are white collar professionals with degrees in engineering or marketing, live in large cities and work for an IT company. It goes without  saying that all of them are tech savvy, who either blog or Twitter.

Nikhil Narayanan is a marketing consultant, who works in Bangalore and is a registered voter in his hometown of Trivandrum , Kerala. In early April Nikhil traveled to Trivandrum to vote in a 3-cornered election between the Congress, Left and BJP. Kerala is traditionally considered as a stronghold for the Left party.

What was interesting about the elections in Trivandrum was the surprise entry of former UN official Shashi Tharoor, who chose to run for the Lok Sabha (lower house) elections when he could have been easily nominated for the Rajya Sabha (upper house) of the Indian Parliament. Mr. Tharoor is pitted against P. Ramachandran Nair from the CPI that won the last elections in 2004 by 70,000 seats. But, this time around change could be in the air.

Mr. Tharoor is part of a small band of white collar professionals, who have entered the political arena for the first time. Besides the traditional form of wooing voters, Mr. Tharoor deployed an online strategy and harnessed the power of mobile phones, Twitter , Facebook etc to woo many of his young voters. Did Mr. Tharoor’s multi-pronged strategy work?  Could he win by a narrow margin ? We will know when the results are declared in mid-May.

The overall turnout in Kerala was about 70 percent and here is a breakdown of the turnout in Kerala.

In the meantime here is our first digital profile of Nikhil Narayanan.

KB: Where  did you vote? Who are major candidates and parties from your constituency?

NN: I voted from Trivandrum, Kerala. The major candidates from my constituency were: Shashi Tharoor (INC),Ramachandran Nair (CPI), Krishnadas ( BJP)

KB: What are the major issues that concerned you?

NN: Development (or lack of it) in the city.

KB: Who do you think has the strongest chances of winning and why?

NN: I am betting on Shashi Tharoor winning the elections in this constituency.

Here is why I think he has a strong chance of winning.

a) In spite of a low voter turnout in the urban areas (people had left for hometowns, polling on a Thursday, and the Tuesday before was a holiday for Vishu), many new voters turned up and cast their ballot. The voters who took off were government employees, a  majority who support the left party (CPI. And the new voters (I strongly suspect) would have voted for Shashi Tharoor ,irrespective of their political inclinations.

b) Many Left supporters and their families abstained from voting thanks to the infighting in the Left (CPI vs.CPI-M fights). I also think that the pre-poll strategy of the Left’s  tie-up with Abdul Nasar Madani would have cost them a lot of votes.

KB: Is this the first time you voted?

NN: No. I have voted previously.

KB: Were you involved in any election campaign awareness program either as an individual or as part of a program?

NN: No, I was not involved in any election campaign awareness program. However, I  met the people handling Shashi Tharoor’s campaign (folks who flew down from abroad) and helped them in whatever little way I could. Also,met some local party workers.

KB: Who would you like to see as the next prime minister of India?

NN: Shashi Tharoor if I may say that.