Global COE Hi-Stat Discussion Paper Series 257

Research Unit for Statisticaland Empirical Analysis in Social Sciences (Hi-Stat)

Voter Turnout and the Principle of"One Person, One Vote":
Empirical Evidence fromthe Constituency Freeze in India

Hi-Stat Discussion Paper

Yuko Mori

November 2012

Hi-Stat
Institute of Economic Research
Hitotsubashi University
2-1 Naka, Kunitatchi Tokyo, 186-8601 Japan
http://gcoe.ier.hit-u.ac.jp

Voter Turnout and the Principle of “One Person, One Vote”:
Empirical Evidence from the Constituency Freeze in India1
Yuko Mori 2
October, 2012

Abstract
This paper uses panel data from national and state elections in India during the period
1977–2007 to examine the effect of inequality in constituency population size on voter
turnout. During this period, constituency boundaries in India remained fixed. As a result,differences in population size between constituencies increased, thus changing the valueof a single vote. Using this large variation in population size and informative data, thispaper carefully distinguishes the effect of population size from other factors. We findthat an increase of 100,000 electorates decreases voter turnout by 1.6%. In addition, we
find that the share of votes gained by national political parties is greater insmall-population constituencies. This suggests that political parties direct their efforts inelectoral campaigns preferentially to less populous constituencies; as a result, voters insmall constituencies are more likely to participate in elections.

1

The author wishes to express her appreciation to Takashi Kurosaki, Daiji Kawaguchi, Norihito
Sakamoto, and the participants of the Political Economy of Institutions and Expectations III (Waseda
University) and Japanese Economic Association 2012 Spring Meeting (Hokkaido University) for
their very helpful comments and suggestions. This work was supported by JSPS Grant-in-Aid for
JSPS Fellows 246375.
2
JSPS Research Fellow. E-mail: k121012z@r.hit-u.ac.jp.
11. Introduction
The democratic principle of “one person, one vote, one value” supposes that one
person’s vote should not have a greater weight than another’s. In a representative system,
where each constituency elects a single representative or a fixed number ofrepresentatives, preserving this principle requires that constituencies have roughly thesame population. However, in some countries, such as the United States, Japan, andIndia, there are huge inequalities in population size across constituencies 3. While thesecases have generated significant controversy about fair representation—that is, about
inequalities in the value of a single vote—little is known about whether population
inequalities affect voting behavior. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of
population size on voter turnout and further investigate how inequality in the value of avote distorts political conditions.
Why do people vote? This question has spawned an enormous amount ofscholarly attention, both theoretically and empirically. According to the traditional
approach (Riker and Ordeshook, 1968), the probability of a vote being pivotal, which
relates directly to population size, is an important factor in the decision to vote. Effects
3

The inequality in population size between states in U.S. Senate elections is huge, since the numberof seats allocated to states is fixed at two. In Japan, too, there are large differences in population
sizes, especially in the upper house. India, which this paper focuses on, has staggering inequalities
even in lower house elections. The distortion due to population size inequality has been studied in
the context of redistribution (Atlas et al., 1995; Hoover and Pecorino, 2005; Porto and Sanguinetti,2001). Most studies show that constituencies with larger populations get lower fiscal transfers fromtheir governments.
2

of population size on voter turnout have been studied in a variety of contexts. A study
by Geys (2006), which surveyed the research about voter turnout using aggregate datafrom constituencies, states, and countries, found that more than half of population size
estimates had a negative sign (67 among 120 regressions). Thus, Geys concluded that
population size is an important factor affecting voter turnout. 4
Although there are many studies about the relationship between population sizeand voter turnout, few estimate the causal effect of population size. There are two
fundamental problems in generating an unbiased and significant estimate for the effectof population size on voter turnout: lack of variation in constituency population size andendogeneity caused by omitted variable bias. The former problem occurs because mostcountries draw constituency borders to achieve equal population size acrossconstituencies. Little variation in explanatory variables makes it difficult to getsignificant estimators. The latter problem can occur, for example, when constituencies
include large urban areas where voter turnout is usually low; thus, the negative
correlation between voter turnout and population size may not be because of the large
population size but because of low voter turnout in urban areas.
To deal with these problems, this study focuses on the electoral system in India,
4

Aldrich (1993), Muller (2003) and Feddersen (2004) reviews literature about turnout. Some recent
papers use laboratory experiments to find the negative effects of population size on turnout, although
the size of population is always very small (For example, Levine and Palfrey (2007)).
3

where the borders of constituencies for both national and state elections remained
almost static from 1977 to 2007. Due to the constituency freeze, large variations in
population sizes developed across constituencies. For example, in national elections, thelargest constituency had 86 times as many voters as the smallest one.
Another advantage of focusing on India is that we can minimize the bias bycomparing the voter turnout of a single constituency in different elections, thus
eliminating a variety of heterogeneous factors. In this study, two strategies are employed
to control for heterogeneity across constituencies. One is to use the fixed effect modelwith long panel data for approximately 30 years. 5 While most studies use only panel
data for aggregate units such as states and countries, this study uses data at theconstituency level. However, while the fixed effect estimate reduces the endogeneity
problem, the coefficient of population size could still have a bias. The fixed effectmodel uses the variation of population change to identify the effect of population size.
When the population growth is concentrated in urban area, it is also difficult todetermine whether the negative correlation between population growth and voter
turnout is caused by a change in the value of each vote or by a change in demographic
variables.

5

Coat et al. (2008) also use long panel data from Texas liquor referenda. However, they focus on
small-scale elections and do not consider heterogeneities of districts.
4

To deal with the above problem, this paper uses an alternative strategy, whichis to compare voter turnout between different elections, a national election and a stateelection, in the same constituency. In India, one national constituency is integrated byseveral state constituencies. Since there is also inequality in population size between
state constituencies within a national constituency, we can examine the effect of
population size in state constituencies on voter turnout in state elections. To control forheterogeneities among state constituencies, voter turnout in a national election is used asa proxy variable for the state constituency fixed effect. In other words, since the valueof a single vote is different between two elections even in the same state constituency,
we can estimate the effect of differences in the value of a single vote on voter turnout
between the two elections. This identification strategy is possible because the Election
Commission of India provides data on voter turnout in national elections on a state
constituency basis. Using these data, we can observe a state constituency’s voter turnout
for national as well as state elections.
Using these two empirical strategies, we find that the larger a constituency’s
population, the lower the voter turnout rate. More specifically, in national elections, anincrease of one million electorates decreases voter turnout by 18%. In the context ofstate elections, the fixed effect model shows that an increase of 100,000 electorates,5

which is around the mean size, decreases voter turnout by 4.7%. The estimation using
voter turnout in national elections as a proxy variable shows that an increase of 100,000
electorates decreases voter turnout by 1.6%. The difference between the two results
suggests that the simple estimation by fixed effect model causes an omitted variablebias.
We also investigate one possible explanation of why people are more motivatedto vote in small-population constituencies. Our hypothesis is based on work by Shachar
and Nalebuff (1999), who use voting data from a U.S. presidential election to show thatan increase in population size leads to reduced effort by political campaign
organizations, which in turn results in decreased voter turnout. To examine whether thismechanism applies in India, we investigate the relationship between population size andvote share by political party. We find that increased population size decreases the voteshare of national parties (defined as parties that are active in more than four states). This
result indirectly supports the hypothesis that the effort of political parties is lower inlarge constituencies.
The remainder of this paper is structured as follows. Section 2 discusses the
hypothesis that population size has a negative effect on voter turnout. Section 3 explains
the structure of the electoral system in India and provides an overview of inequalities in
6

population size. Section 4 presents empirical strategies. Section 5 shows the study
results and analyzes the political party-related mechanism in the negative effects of
population size. Section 6 summarizes these findings and concludes.

2. Why Does Population Size Decrease Voter Turnout?
There are two main reasons why population size has a negative effect on voter turnout.
The first is described by the traditional model of Riker and Ordeshook (1968), which
crystallizes insights from Downs (1957). This model assumes that the decision toparticipate is based on whether the expected benefit exceeds the private cost of voting.
The expected benefit increases with (1) the expected difference in utility from thevoter’s favorite candidate winning, versus the opponent winning, and (2) the probabilityof affecting the election result. The latter element is especially relevant to population
size, since the larger the population size in a constituency, the smaller the probability
that one voter will make a difference. Therefore, we hypothesize a negative relation
between population size and voter turnout.
Although the probability changing the election result by turnout of one voter ispositive, the magnitude of influence is close to zero. There are, therefore, many attempts
to try to explain the positive turnout (for example, Muller, 2003). One of the alternative7

mechanism is the mobilization model (Feddersen, 2004). This model assumes thatpolitical leader determinants the level of resources allocating to voters which is a
decisive variable for turnout decision. Based on this mechanism, Shachar and Nalebuff(1999) explain the negative correlation between population size and turnout. The costsof campaigning in constituencies with large populations are thought to be higher. For
example, the total costs of advertising on television, in newspapers, and through posters
increase with audience size. Using state-level voting data from U.S. presidential
elections and applying structural estimation, Shachar and Nalebuff (1999) show that anincrease in population size leads to less effort by political leaders, which in turn results
in a decrease in voter turnout 6.
The political conditions in India are different than in the U.S., especially in thediversity of political parties and the scale of population (around 700 million eligible
voters in India). However, it is to be expected that political parties in India are strategicin their behavior when it comes to population size in constituencies. In particular,
national parties (i.e., those active in more than four states) find it necessary to selectconstituencies where they will expend their resources to get a large share of legislative
seats at a possibly lower cost. McMilan (2000) suggests the possibility that the
Shachar and Nalebuff (1999) mainly focus on how close an election is expected to be
and show that the amount of effort expended by political leaders in a given state isbased on the chance of that state’s being pivotal.

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constituency freeze has had an impact on the behavior of major parties such as the
Indian National Congress (INC) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in national elections.
In addition, it is reasonable to expect that political campaigning encourages people tovote: to illustrate, Banerjee et al. (2010) showed that a campaign with information on
the qualifications of candidates increased voter turnout in Delhi 7. Therefore, the resultsof the Shachar and Nalebuff (1999) study might apply to national parties in India. For
this reason, we also hypothesize that population size has a negative effect on voter
turnout.
In the following sections, we estimate the effect of population size. In addition,
the correlation between population size and the vote share of national parties is also
investigated.

3. Institutional BackgroundThe states and union territories of India are divided into constituencies electing a single
representative in state elections (Vidhan Sabha). For national elections (Lok Sabha),several constituencies are combined into one. National and state elections areconstitutionally scheduled to take place every five years. In some cases, elections have
In the case of Pakistan, Gine and Mansuri (2011) also show that information
campaign promotes women to vote.

7

9

been called before the five-year term, mostly owing to shifting political alignments. The
minimum voting age has been 18 since 1989; before that time, it was 21.
The Indian constitution states that two independent national-level commissions
are responsible for implementing election systems. One is the Election Commission,
which oversees state and national elections. The other is the Delimitation Commission,
which is responsible for redistricting and is constituted whenever new census estimates
are announced.
In 1976, the 42nd Constitutional Amendment instituted a freeze on thereadjustment of constituencies for national and state legislature elections until the first
census after the year 2001. Accordingly, in 2001 the 91st Constitutional Amendment
Bill stipulated the delimitation of constituencies for national and state legislatures,
although the number of legislators allocated to each state was not changed and thereadjustment has been delayed until 2026 8. In national and state elections, where someseats can be contested by Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe candidates (SC/ST), theconstituencies reserved for SC/ST were also fixed (with a few exceptions). The
constituency freeze was implemented in the first place because redrawing constituencies
or changing the allocation of seats would have discriminated against states that
There are discussions about the validity of the freeze (McMilan, 2000;
Sivaramakrishnan, 2001).

810

successfully carried out family planning programs. Until the borders were readjusted in
2008, national and state constituencies had been almost completely fixed, from 1977 to
2004 and from 1977 to 2007, respectively9.
Owing to the freeze, population size inequalities between constituencies
became quite large. Figure 1 shows the relative population sizes of constituencies in thenational elections for each election year during the freeze. We can observe enormous
population inequalities even in 1977 and an expansion of these inequalities from 1977
to 2004. The population size of the most populous constituency in the 1999 election,
Outer Delhi, with 3,101,838 voters, was more than 86 times larger than that of thesmallest constituency, Lakshadweep, with 35,716 voters.
Figure 2 shows the relative population sizes of the state election constituencies,
using voting data from the latest elections until 2007. There are huge population
inequalities among the constituencies at the state level as well as the national level. For
example, the largest constituency in Gujarat, Jalalpore, with 1,593,907 voters, was morethan 24 times larger than the smallest constituency, Kalpur, with 64,594 voters (note:
Figure 2 does not show relative inequalities greater than 10).
Using data from the 2004 national election, we plot the relationship between

9

There were 542 national constituencies in 1977. This number went up to 543 in 2004.
11

population size and voter turnout in Figure 3. The predicted value from a nonparametric
regression of voter turnout on population size without any additional control variables isalso reported via the solid line 10. From the graph, we can observe that the larger the
population size of a constituency, the lower voter turnout. At this stage, the possibility
that this negative correlation is caused by other factors, relating to heterogeneity
between constituencies, must be considered. Therefore, we try to estimate the causal
effect of population size on voter turnout in the following section.

4. Empirical Strategy
Since previous studies investigating turnout suggest that demographic variables
influence voter turnout (Wolfinger and Rosenstone 1980), the coefficients might bebiased if we do not control the heterogeneities of constituencies. For example, if
large-population constituencies are likely to be urban areas, where voter turnout is
usually low, the negative correlation between voter turnout and population size is not
because of large population size itself but because of low voter turnout in urban areas.
To see the heterogeneous of constituencies in India, the population size in aconstituency is regressed on various demographic variables. In Table 1, the column (1)10We use local weighted regression smoothing method.
12and column (2) show the results with and without state dummies, respectively. The
coefficients of population share of rural residents are minus both in column (1) andcolumn (2) although an estimate in column (2) is statistically insignificant. It is also
shown that the population share of cultivator workers has negative correlation to
population size. These results suggest that the value of a single vote in rural area islarger than that in urban area.
To acquire an unbiased estimation, controlling the heterogeneities of eachconstituency, we compare the voter turnout of one constituency in different elections
using alternative data. First, the fixed effect model is employed using long panel data. In
this specification, we compare the voter turnout of one constituency in different election
years. Second, we use unique data from the 2004 national election, which can beobserved on a state election constituency basis. Using these data, we can compare one
constituency’s voter turnout in a national election and a state election. The details of theidentification strategies are as follows.

4.1 Panel Data Analysis
We conduct an analysis of all national election constituencies over the period
1977–2004. In that period, nine national elections were held: 1977, 1980, 1984, 1989,
13

1991, 1996, 1998, 1999, and 2004. State elections are examined over the period
1977–2007 11. We exclude union territories from the state election regressions, since
there are no elections in most union territories. Data about voter turnout and the numberof electorates come from the Election Commission of India 12.
The basic empirical specifications for national and state elections are presented
in equations (1) and (2) as follows.

(1) National Elections:turnout (national ) nt = a 0 + a1 population sizent + NC n + Yt + trend t ∗ NC n + e nt .

(2) State Elections:turnout ( state) st = β 0 + β1 population size st + SC s + Yt + trend t ∗ SC s + u st ,where turnout (national/state) is voter turnout as a percentage of the total number of
eligible voters in the national/state constituency; population size is the number ofelectorates (in millions) living in each national/state constituency; NC/SC are fixed
In 2000, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, and Uttaranchal were carved out of Bihar,
Madhya Pradesh, and Uttar Pradesh, respectively. Since dividing states affects thesituation of political competition and voting behavior, as shown byChakrabarti and Roy(2007), the period is restricted to 1977–1999 for a robustness check. The results are
similar to those from regressions focused on the period 1977–2004.
12 The website is [http://eci.nic.in/eci_main/index.asp].
11

14

effects for national/state constituencies, and Y is the year effect 13.
In a fixed effect model, the effect of population size is estimated using the time
variation of population size: that is, population growth. One concern with fixed effectmodels is that other trends related to population size may affect voter turnout. For
example, if population growth is concentrated in urban areas, where voter turnout islower than in rural areas, as shown by Kondo (2003), then decreases in voter turnout are
not attributed to population size but to the expansion of the urban population. It isdifficult to observe demographic variables such as urban population, literacy rate, andothers by constituency since constituency borders differ from boundaries used by thecensus, which would be the data source for investigating demographic variables. To
reduce omitted variable bias that might originate from other demographic trends, we
include an interaction term for the trend and constituency fixed effect. While theinteraction term can decrease omitted variable bias, it might be insufficient to control
the heterogeneities between constituencies by linear trend. Therefore, we employ analternative specification to capture heterogeneities, using more detailed information on aby-constituency basis.

In some cases, there are no elections owing to political instability or conflicts.
Although there are some missing observations and unbalanced panels, we include these
constituencies for the purpose of collecting various data.

13

15

4.2. Voter Turnout in State Elections on a per Constituency BasisAn alternative way to control for a constituency fixed effect and so identify the impact
of population size is to compare the turnout in one constituency in different elections; inthis case, a national election and a state election. Since state constituencies are thecomponents of national constituencies, the borders coincide. However, population sizes
differ in state election constituencies versus national election constituencies, so the voter
is faced with a difference in the value of a vote between national and state elections. The
Election Commission of India has made turnout data in national elections available not
only on a national constituency basis but also on a state constituency basis since the2004 elections. Using that unique data, we employ following model:

turnout ( state) st = γ 0 + γ 1 population size st + γ 2 turnout (national ) s 2004 + NC n + u st ,(3)

where turnout (state)st is voter turnout for a state election in a state constituency a inyear t, population size is the number of electorates (in millions) belonging to the state
constituency s, turnout (national)s2004 is the voter turnout for the 2004 national electionin the state constituency a, NC represents fixed effects for the national constituency, andY is the year. The election year t is the closest year to the 2004 national election.
16

Since national constituency fixed effects (PC) are controlled, γ 1 is estimatedusing variation in the population size of state election constituencies within a national
election constituency. However, there are other factors that are correlated withpopulation size and have an effect on voter turnout. To control these omitted variables,
we include voter turnout in national elections by state election constituencies. In thisspecification, we assume that voter turnout in a national election captures theheterogeneities of state election constituencies. In other words, γ 1 represents thedifference in voter turnout between a national election and a state election owing to thedifference of inequality in the value of a single vote.

5. Results
5.1 Panel Data
The summary statistics are reported in Table 2. There is large variation in voter turnout
and population size. The mean of voter turnout is around 60% in both national and stateelections.
The results from the regression using panel data from national elections are
given in Table 3. As shown in column (1), the coefficient of population size from theregression including only year effects is -10.0 and is statistically significant. Column (2)17and column (3) report the estimates from the regression including states or national
constituency fixed effects. The coefficients of population size are -9.0 and -12.2,
respectively. In column (4), we estimate population size from the regression including
both national constituency fixed effects and national constituency specific trend effects.
The coefficient is about -17.7. This result demonstrates that if the population size
increases by one million, which is the mean of population size, voter turnout decreases
by 17.7%. This effect is politically significant compared with the mean value of thenational turnout rate, 60.1 %. The difference in the coefficients of population size
among the three specifications confirms that there are heterogeneities between thenational constituencies.
Table 4 reports the results of the regression using panel data from stateelections. The estimate from the regression with state fixed effects, as shown in column(1), is -74.5 and is statistically significant. Column (2) shows the estimate derived fromthe regression with state constituency fixed effects, and the coefficient of population
size is -41.5. As shown in column (4), the estimate from the regression with state
constituency fixed effects and state constituency specific trend effects is around -46.9
and is statistically significant. This result demonstrates that if population size isincreased by 100,000, which is twice the mean of population size in state constituencies,
18

voter turnout might decrease by 4.69%.

5.2 Voter Turnout in State Elections on a per Constituency Basis
The results from the regression using equation (3) are shown in Table 5. The estimates
without national constituency fixed effects are shown in column (1). The coefficient of
population size is around -21.4. On the other hand, the estimate from the specification
with national constituency fixed effects, as shown in column (2), is around -16.6, whichis smaller in absolute value than the estimate in column (1). The coefficients of voter
turnout in the 2004 national election are 0.55 to 0.60, as shown in column (1) and incolumn (2), and both are statistically significant, which confirms that there is acorrelation between voter turnout in national and state elections. While the coefficient of
population size is -46.9 in column (3) of Table 4, the coefficient in column (2) of Table
5 is -16.6. The fixed effect model using panel data as written in equation (2) proxies theconstituency specific heterogeneous trend with only a linear trend term. However,equation (3) uses more detailed information on a state election constituency basis. For
this reason, the preferable specification in this study is represented in the estimates incolumn (2) of Table 5.
Voting behavior in state elections might be affected by the results of national
19

elections since the power balance among political parties in state legislative races isaffected by political conditions in national legislative races. For the robustness check,we classify state elections as being before or after the 2004 national election. Columns(3) and (4) report the results. Since several state elections were not held from 2004 to
2007, the number of observations after the 2004 elections is less than the number before
the 2004 elections 14. The coefficient of population size from the regression using datafrom before the 2004 elections is -19.06, which is similar to the estimate in column (2)and is also statistically significant. The coefficient from the regression using data fromafter the 2004 elections is -9.5, which is also statistically significant 15. In addition, thecoefficient of voter turnout in the 2004 national election is similar in columns (2)through (4). This result confirms that voter turnout in national elections can proxypersistence characteristics that are correlated with voter turnout.

5.3 Population Size and Vote Share of National Parties
In this section, we examine the effects of population size on the behavior of political

Since several constituencies did not hold elections, the observations in columns (2)and (3) are different.
15 The difference in the coefficients between columns (2) and (4) is mainly due to thesample difference. If the states used for estimation in column (2) are restricted to thestates used for estimation in column (4), the coefficient of population size from theregression using data from around the 2004 national elections is similar to that incolumn (4).
1420

parties. As discussed in section 2, population size inequality might cause differences in
the amount of effort political parties exert in various constituencies. The Election
Commission of India defines some political parties as national parties which are active
in more than four states 16. It is reasonable to expect that national parties might vary theintensity of their efforts in different voting constituencies in a strategic way. In contrast,
it may be the case that other small parties are not able to select constituencies for highor low effort, because their support tends to derive from specific population segments orregions (Roy and Wallace, 2007).
In this section, we indirectly investigate the effect of population size on parties’
efforts. Since the competitiveness between political parties is different between states,
we focus on national elections. The specification is similar to equation (1). The
dependent variable is the vote share of national parties. The main explanatory variable isthe population size of national constituencies, as in the previous section. The period is
1977–2004. Since the number of parties involved in an election affects competition andis related to population size, we control for that factor.
Table 6 reports the results. Column (1) shows the result from the regression
where the dependent variable is the vote share of all national parties. The coefficient of
National parties include the Indian National Congress, the Bharatiya Janata Party,
the Janata Party (includes Janata, Lok Dal, and Janata Dal), the Communist Party, theCommunist Party of India (Marxist), and the Bahujan Samaj Party.

16

21

population size is -21.1 and is statistically significant. This result implies that if
population size increases by one million, the vote share of a given national party
decreases by 21%, which is a considerable impact.
Columns (2) and (3) focus on the vote share of two major parties in India, theIndian National Congress (INC) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). While the INC
has been dominant since independence, the BJP has been in power since the 1980s. Ourestimates show that for both parties the coefficients of population size are negative andstatistically significant. The INC’s population size coefficient is -11.9, which isstatistically significant. The BJP’s is similar at -9.3 and is also statistically significant.
Although the regressions in this section do not directly test the hypothesis that large
population size decreases these parties’ campaign efforts (we cannot observe actual
efforts), the results suggest a correlation. This finding implies that the constituency
freeze of 1977–2004 distorted the power balance of political parties.

6. Conclusion
In this paper, we investigated how inequality in population size between constituencies
affects voter turnout. Based on the unique political situation in India, where the bordersof constituencies for national and state elections were fixed during 1977–2007, we
22

empirically analyzed the relationship between population size and voter turnout. The
finding derived from this study is that large population size decreases voter turnout.
This result is shown both in national and state elections and is robust with alternative
specifications. In addition, the results suggest that the vote share of national parties inlarger constituencies is less than in smaller constituencies. This implies that national
parties intensify their efforts in small constituencies since they can gain vote share more
efficiently.
As is often the case of political science, it is difficult to observe voting
behavior with voters’ characteristics owing to a lack of detailed information. Therefore,
we cannot analyze the mechanism of the relationship between population size and voter
turnout. Despite these limitations, this paper does support the suggestion that a
constituency freeze distorts political participation and the behavior of political parties.

23

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Sivaramakrishnan, K. C. (2001) "Constituencies Delimitation: Deep Freeze Again?,"
Economic and Political Weekly, pp.4694-4696.
Wolfinger, R. and S. Rosenstone (1980) Who Votes?, Yale University Press

25

Frequency

0 50 100 150 200

0 50 100 150 200

0 50 100 150 200

Figure 1. Inequality of Population Size among Constituencies in National Elections

0

20

1977

1980

1984

1989

1991

1996

1998

1999

2004

40

60

80

0

20

40

60

80

0

20

40

60

80

Gap of the number of electors

Note: Horizontal axis represents how many times larger the population size is relative
to the smallest-population constituencies. Vertical axis represents the number of

constituencies in each size class.

26

Figure 2. Inequality of Population Size among Constituencies in State Elections, 2002–
2007
Assam

Bihar

GujaratHaryana

Himachal Pradesh

Karnataka

KeralaMadhya Pradesh

Maharashtra

OrissaPunjabRajasthan

Tamil Nadu

Uttar PradeshWest Bengal

50 100 150
050 100 150
050 100 150

0Frequency

0

50 100 150

Andhra Pradesh

0

5

10

0

5

10

0

5

10

0

5

10

Gap of the number of electors

Note: Horizontal axis represents how many times larger the population sizes are
relative to the smallest-population constituencies. Constituencies with more than 10times the population of the smallest constituencies are not included in the graphic.
Vertical axis represents the number of constituencies in each size class. Data are fromlatest state elections until 2007.

27

20

40

Percentage
60

80

100

Figure 3. Constituency Population Size and Voter Turnout, 2004 National Election0

1

2
Population size (million)
Voter turnout

3

4

Nonparametric method

Note: Horizontal axis represents the numbers of electors in national constituencies, inmillions. Vertical axis represents voter turnout for the 2004 national election as apercentage. The solid line displays the fitted value from nonparametric regression of
voter turnout on population size using local weighted regression smoothing method
without any additional control variables.

28

Table 1. Constituency Population Size and Demographic Variables
(1)

(2)

-0.821-0.616(0.356)(0.462)-0.139-0.034(0.352)(0.493)

0.133

0.168

(0.208)(0.262)-0.418-0.497(0.281)(0.435)-1.503-2.078(0.606)(0.893)-0.664-0.466(0.402)(0.708)-0.566-1.794(1.970)(2.216)-1.8380.166(4.909)(5.584)-0.780-0.183(2.779)(3.043)

1.642

2.507

(1.839)(2.011)

7.157

1.744

(8.738)(11.566)-4.897-3.757(6.216)(7.523)-16.654-18.904(10.968)(12.858)-2.823-1.196(2.651)(3.337)

State fixed effect

No

Yes

Observations

511

511

R-squared

0.05

0.07

Population share of rural residents
Population share of SCs
Population share of STs
Literacy rate
Population share by industry:
Cultivators
Agricultural laborers
Livestock
Mining & quarrying
Household industry
Manufacturing
Construction
Trade & commerce
Transport, storage, & communicate.
Other services

Note: Standard errors are in parentheses. Dependent variable is the population in aconstituency (million).
29

Table 2. Summary Statistics(a) National election

Variable

Observation

Mean

Std. Dev

Min

Max

Voter turnout

4,843

60.11

11.46

5.07

91.77

Population size (million)

4,843

0.94

0.30

0.02

3.37

Observation

Mean

Std. Dev

Min

Max

Voter turnout

26,159

62.66

13.29

0.39

98.87

Population size (million)

26,1590.14

0.06

0.0035

1.59(b) State election

Variable30

Table 3. Constituency Population Size and Voter Turnout in National Elections
(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

-9.988-9.008-12.18-17.67(0.762)(0.692)(0.982)(2.170)Year fixed effect

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

State fixed effect

No

Yes

No

No

National

constituency

No

No

Yes

Yes

national

No

No

No

Yes

Observations

4,843

4,843

4,843

4,843

R-squared

0.078

0.505

0.704

0.805

Population size (million)

fixed effect
Trend

*

constituency fixed effectNote: Standard errors are in parentheses.

31

Table 4. Constituency Population Size and Voter Turnout in State Elections, 1977–2007
(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

-74.54-41.47-28.23-46.87(1.264)(1.462)(1.750)(4.219)Year fixed effect

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

State fixed effect

No

Yes

No

No

State constituency fixed

No

No

Yes

Yes

No

No

No

Yes

Observations

26,15926,15926,15926,159R-squared

0.363

0.539

0.773

0.855

Population size (million)

effect
Trend

*

state

constituency fixed effectNote: Standard errors are in parentheses

32

Table 5. Constituency Population Size and Turnout in Different Election Types(dependent variable: voter turnout for state election)(1)
around 2004(2)
around 2004

(3)

(4)

before 2004

after 2004

national

national

election

election

Population size

-21.43-16.63-19.06-9.528(million)(1.797)(1.648)(1.579)(1.747)

Voter turnout for 2004

0.550

0.603

0.616

0.667

national election(0.0117)(0.0134)(0.0130)(0.0150)

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Observations

3,504

3,504

3,513

2,961

R-squared

0.784

0.893

0.847

0.927

National

constituency

fixed effectNote: Standard errors are in parentheses. Regressions of column (1) and column (2) use
data from state elections closest to the 2004 national election. Regression of column (3)uses state elections before 2004 national election. Regression of column (4) uses stateelections after the 2004 national election.

33

Table 6. Constituency Population Size and Vote Share of National Parties (dependent
variable: vote share as %)
(1)

(2)

(3)

national parties

INC

BJP

Population size

-21.12-11.94-9.303(in millions)(6.002)(4.753)(3.828)Observations

4,840

4,840

4,840

R-squared

0.804

0.722

0.793

Party

Note: Standard errors are in parentheses. Dependent variable of column (1) is the voteshare of national parties. Dependent variables of column (2) and column (3) are voteshares of the Indian National Congress (INC) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

34