Increased voter turnout seems to be concentrated in states where the voters have been at the forefront of the ongoing rural distress.
Business
Standard : As the election
2019 season enters the final lap with polling left only for one
phase of the seven scheduled, voter turnout this time around is
likely to create a record. According to reports, the 2019 election is
on track to achieve record voter turnout of around 67 per cent (55 –
56 million new voters relative to 2014 general elections), which
would surpass the previous record of 66.4 per cent during the 2014
polls.
As
per the data available with the Election Commission of India (ECI),
voter turnout in the first four phases stood at 69.5 per cent (first
phase), 69.44 per cent (second phase), 68.4 per cent (third phase)
and 65.51 per cent (fourth phase).
Constituency-wise
comparison, as per a Nomura report suggests that in the first four
phases (around 69 per cent of the seats), increased voter
participation was concentrated in the key Bharatiya Janata Party
(BJP) bastions of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh,
Gujarat, Assam and Karnataka.
“The
two outliers are Andhra Pradesh and Kerala, where voter turnout was
high, but the BJP’s
prospects have traditionally been weak,” the report says.
So,
will the BJP/National Democratic Alliance (NDA) benefit from this
higher voter turnout or will it succumb to anti-incumbency?
Both
theoretical and empirical studies, according to Nomura, have
struggled to find causality between voter turnout and election
outcomes. In past Lok Sabha elections, there have been
anti-incumbency outcomes during both high and low turnout elections.
“On
the one hand, increased voter turnout may indicate a strong sense of
dissatisfaction that has led to voters coalescing to boot out the
incumbent, although studies have disputed this causality in previous
elections,” wrote Sonal Varma, managing director and chief India
economist at Nomura in a recent co-authored report with Aurodeep
Nandi.
Adding: “On the other
hand, high voter turnout could reflect active participation at the
grass root level, with the party cadre coaxing citizens to vote. It
may also be indicative of more structural, party-agnostic trends,
wherein increased social media outreach, general political awareness
and ease of voting contribute to participation of previously dormant
registered voters.”
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