Concurrent Elections and Voter Turnout: The Effect of the De-Linking of State Elections on Electoral Participation in India's Parliamentary Polls, 1971-2004

Abstract

This article examines the effect that the decoupling of state and national elections has had on voter turnout in India's national parliamentary polls since 1971. According to conventional wisdom in the comparative literature on electoral turnout, separate elections to multiple levels and/or branches of government should depress turnout relative to co‐temporal polls, ceteris paribus. The evidence from Indian elections provides strong confirmation for this hypothesis. This suggests that political decentralization through separate national and local elections may actually weaken citizens' incentives to participate in the democratic electoral process.

Turnout in Local Elections: Evidence from Canadian Cities, 2004–2014

“…When elections are held simultaneously, voter turnout tends to increase. These findings as they relate to local elections accord well with findings from the literature on concurrent elections and voter turnout (see, for example, Germann, 2016; Nikolenyi, 2010).…”

“…When elections are held simultaneously, voter turnout tends to increase. These findings as they relate to local elections accord well with findings from the literature on concurrent elections and voter turnout (see, for example, Germann, 2016;Nikolenyi, 2010). Hajnal and Lewis (2003) suggest that the presence of the possibility of calling a referendum increases residents' interest in public affairs and is therefore also likely to increase turnout.…”

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“…Timing may refer to the day of the week on which elections are held or the concurrence of several elections. Both weekend voting and concurrent elections increase turnout rates (Blais, 2006;Carreras, 2018;Franklin, 2004;Martinez i Coma, 2016;Nikolenyi, 2010;Pintor and Gratschew, 2002). Finally, temporal variations may refer to declining turnout since the 1980s (Blais and Rubenson, 2013;Stockemer, 2015).…”

Anti-liberal, anti-establishment or constituency-driven? Spatial econometric analysis of polish parliamentary election results in 2015

“…-political: closeness of election (Fauvelle-Aymar and François, 2006) -there is a positive relation between the competitiveness of an election and the percentage of voters come to vote, political fragmentation (Dettrey and Schwindt-Bayer, 2009), campaign expenditures (Hogan, 2013;Holbrook and Weinschenk, 2014); -institutional: electoral system (Eggers, 2015;Endersby and Krieckhaus, 2008), compulsory voting (Fowler, 2013), registration requirements (Ansolabehere and Konisky, 2006), and concurrent elections (Nikolenyi, 2010).…”