Does Higher Turnout Hurt Incumbents? An Analysis of State Elections in India

Bibliographic Data

ID6170764
AuthorsMilan Vaishnav (0000-0002-7696-125X, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, corresponding author), Johnathan Guy (0000-0002-5959-227X, University of Chicago)
Year2018
Volume6
Issue1
Pages71-87
Publication date2018-04-04
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueStudies in Indian Politics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2321-0230 • E-ISSN: 2321-7472
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/2321023018762817
OpenAlexW2795659064
LanguageEN
References cited14

Conventional wisdom holds that an increase in voter turnout hurts incumbents in Indian elections. This belief has become a central feature of how analysts discuss Indian voter behaviour. Yet there are few systematic analyses of the relationship between turnout and incumbent performance. To fill this gap, we analysed a dataset of elections in India’s 18 major states between 1980 and 2012. Our analyses show that an increase in turnout, relative to the prior election, has no statistically meaningful relationship with three measures of an incumbent government’s electoral performance. While the belief about the anti-incumbent nature of rising turnout is widely held, it does not appear to be supported by the data

Demographic economics · Economics · Government (linguistics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Public economics · State (computer science · Turnout · Voter turnout · Voting · Computer Science · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Law · Politics and Society in Latin America · Populism, Right-Wing Movements · Public Administration

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