Indian Politics & Policy Volume 3, Number 1, Spring 2020 | Page 13

Economic Evaluations and the Incumbent Vote in India’s Parliamentary Elections (2014, 2019) 1 Siddharth Swaminathan Indian Politics & Policy • Vol. 3, No. 1 • Spring 2020 Professor of Political Science at the School of Policy and Governance, Azim Premji University. [email protected] Abstract In this article, I empirically evaluate a hypothesis broadly referred to as the economic vote (or economic voting) in political science scholarship in the context of the 2014 and 2019 elections to the Lok Sabha. The economic vote hypothesis considers the relationship between a voter’s retrospective evaluation of their personal or household economic condition and their vote choice for an incumbent. I apply a logistic regression model to individual level data from the National Election Study (NES) post-poll surveys in order to examine this relationship while controlling for the influence of relevant factors such as incumbent party attachment (or partisanship) and the effects of time, among others. I find that a voter’s positive evaluation of household economic conditions increases the likelihood of a vote for the incumbent. Conversely, a voter’s negative evaluation of household economic conditions lowers the likelihood of a vote for the incumbent. The effect of a negative evaluation on incumbent vote choice is stronger than that of a positive evaluation. I also find that the effect of a positive evaluation was stable over the past two elections and that of a negative evaluation increased in magnitude in 2019 relative to 2014. Finally, I find that attachment to an incumbent party or coalition has a strong positive effect on the incumbent vote, and that the likelihood a voter chooses an incumbent in 2019 is also higher. An analysis of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) vote in 2019 reveals that, in addition to economic evaluations and partisanship, socio-demographic factors such as caste-community identity also play an important role. All Hindu caste groups tend to vote for the BJP relative to other religious communities and castes. The effects of other economic and demographic characteristics, such as class, rurality, and gender, are smaller or nonexistent. 9 doi: 10.18278/inpp.3.1.3