Mining data from the National Election Study, this paper cites evidence to show that the perception of the central government mattered for those who voted for the United Progressive Alliance, but not for those who voted for the National Democratic Alliance or other parties. It says that the vote for the UPA was mostly independent of a voter’s perception of the performance of his or her state government. In addition, even after controlling for state-specific factors there were some political cleavages that influenced the vote for the UPA and the NDA. This suggests that national factors did have an influence on the vote for the 2009 Lok Sabha elections though state-level factors continued to be important.