"Bharat ne ghar me ghus kar aatankwadiyo ko maara”. In many election speeches, you would hear Prime Minister Narendra Modi make this claim - that under him, India entered Pakistan and killed terrorists. On the other hand, there are a few words that the PM may not mention as frequently such as “jobs”, “agriculture” or even his own catchphrases like “Make in India”, “Startup India” or “Digital India”.

This is clever politics from the Prime Minister. It seems that a focus on economic issues such as unemployment and agrarian distress is bad for Modi’s popularity but a national security thrust is good for his ratings.

CVoter’s election tracker shows the rise and fall in Modi’s popularity in the past few months and it also maps out which issues assumed more importance in the minds of voters at different points of time. Not surprisingly, Modi’s popularity has a strong positive correlation with public focus on national security and a negative correlation with people’s focus on economic issues.