Indian Politics & Policy Volume 3, Number 1, Spring 2020 | Page 27

Economic Evaluations and the Incumbent Vote in India’s Parliamentary Elections (2014, 2019)
relationship between vote choice and
economic evaluations. 23 A longstanding
view in studies of US voting behavior
is that partisanship becomes the lens
(a “perceptual screen”) through which
a voter views policy decisions and outcomes,
evaluates candidates, forms
preferences over issues, and makes a
vote choice. 24 Attachment to a party thus
influences the type of political information
voters encounter, the way they interpret
this information, and whether
they consider this information credible
or not. This implies that pre-election
vote intention for an incumbent likely
drives a voter to evaluate household
economic conditions favorably (and
vice versa) rather than the other way
around. This also implies that a number
of factors thought to influence the BJP
vote in 2019, such as a respondent’s view
on demonetization, attitude toward national
security threats and India’s retaliatory
action against insurgent groups
in Pakistan, a preference for Modi as
the next Prime Minister, are in fact determined
by partisanship. That is, BJP
partisans are more likely to say that demonetization
was necessary despite the
economic hardship it imposes (0.26),
justify military action against Pakistan
(0.10), and express a preference for
Modi as the next prime minister (0.33).
Correlations (in parentheses) indicate
that the above attitudinal variables are
positively and significantly associated
with party attachment to the BJP.
Empirical results are, however,
mixed. Some studies find that vote
choice and economic evaluations are
indeed simultaneously determined, 25
while others consistently find no partisan
bias in economic evaluations. 26 In
this study, however, I do not address the
issue of endogenously determined economic
evaluations. The data required to
assess causal claims are generated from
experimental (or as-if experimental)
designs and the observational nature
of post-poll surveys does not allow me
to make stronger (i.e., causal) claims
about this relationship. I only point to
a statistical correlation between economic
evaluations and incumbent vote
choice. That being said, these sorts of
questions are important and must be
studied in greater detail. Adopting design-based
approaches and embedding
innovations such as survey and list experiments
in post-poll and other public
opinion surveys will allow us to not
only disentangle endogenous relationships
and systematically address issues
of confounding and selection bias, but
also contribute to a broader understanding
of complex processes, such as
public opinion formation, partisanship,
and voting behavior in India. 27
Discussion and Conclusion
In this article, I empirically evaluate
the effects of a voter’s retrospective
evaluation of household economic
conditions on the likelihood of a vote
for the incumbent in elections to the
Lok Sabha in 2014 and 2019. Using the
NES post-poll data, I find evidence for
an economic vote. A voter’s positive
evaluation of household economic conditions
is positively correlated with the
likelihood of a vote for the incumbent.
Conversely, a voter’s negative evaluation
of household economic conditions
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