Indian Economic Review
Publication Type: Journal Article
Author: Aditi Singhal, Sugata Bag
Abstract: This study attempts to unmask the relative importance of partisan alignments vis-à-vis the relevance of individual candidate characteristics for the voters. To facilitate this analysis, our study relies on comparing the election outcomes of incumbent parties against those of incumbent candidates using data from the Indian national elections from 1977 to 2014. The idea hinges on the fact that electoral returns may vary according to the ‘ideological’ alignments of the party (incumbent) vis-a-vis the idiosyncratic factors of the candidates (incumbent). We also analyse the role of political reservation in influencing these voters’ alignments. Our results indicate that while, on average, incumbent parties and candidates are significantly disadvantaged in comparison to their non-incumbent counterparts, the electoral choice of the voters favours parties more than the candidates. However, our analysis of the impact of political reservation shows that an incumbent individual candidate faces far less disadvantages than the incumbent parties in reserved constituencies.
