(Bloomberg) — As India’s general elections near the halfway point, falling voter turnout is raising concerns about voter disengagement in the world’s biggest opinion poll.
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Analysts and political party figures say there are good reasons for the decline and that lower turnout does not necessarily suggest an advantage for either side. Still, the drop has raised questions about the support of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, with uncertainty spreading across financial markets.
This week, around 172 million eligible Indians went to the polls in phase three of the country’s seven-phase election marathon, which runs until June 1. Turnout was 65.7%, lower than in phases one and two and down from 67.4% in the last general election in 2019, according to the Election Commission of India.
Although it is too early to offer a definitive explanation for the decline, there are several likely factors. Chief among them: Voters are having a hard time getting excited about a contest that seems far from questionable. Pre-election polls pointed to prime minister Narendra Modi sailing for a third five-year term in his race against a diminished opposition.
Another possible factor: Modi’s BJP achieved several of its key second-term goals, including removing the autonomy of the northern state of Jammu and Kashmir and the controversial construction of a Hindu temple in the city of Ayodhya. This left the party without major campaign promises to encourage participation this year.
“This time there is no big emotive issue on which the election is being contested, nor any new leadership in the campaign,” said Rahul Verma, a fellow at the Center for Policy Research, a New Delhi think tank.
Modi appeared to acknowledge the challenges in an interview broadcast on Indian broadcaster Republic TV. “In 2014, the country didn’t know me,” he said. “They knew me a little through the media and that I worked in Gujarat. They didn’t know what was really there.”
“In 2024, I see my success becoming my challenge,” he said.
Investors said low turnout was weighing on Indian markets, with the country’s main stock index suffering its biggest daily drop in four months on Thursday due to concerns that low turnout could harm Modi’s re-election prospects. .
There are other possible factors. A scorching heatwave has gripped much of the country in recent weeks, with temperatures up to 5C above normal on election day in many places, including the states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Sikkim.
Hanan Mollah, an eight-time legislator from one of India’s communist parties, also points to lower voting in rural areas, which, according to him, is due to migration from rural to urban areas in recent years. Migrant workers, fearing losing their jobs, are not willing to return to their home villages to vote, he said.
The hangover from the fight against Covid-19 in India may also be at work. Some analysts have said that Indians who died during the coronavirus pandemic may not have been removed from the electoral roll. If true, this could be inflating the electoral body’s count of eligible voters and decreasing turnout. A 2022 study by the World Health Organization estimated 4.7 million Covid-19 deaths in India, nearly 10 times the official government figure.
“Covid deaths in India are significantly underreported,” said Manoh Jha, a member of parliament from the state of Bihar.
Anti-incumbency risks
However, the drop in turnout remains modest for now and does not appear likely to benefit one side or the other, according to analysts and polls on past elections. A 2018 study of Indian state elections concluded that increased turnout did not have a significant relationship with electoral results.
“We have no historical or statistical evidence to suggest that the increase or decline in turnout is related to anti-incumbency,” Verma said.
It is true that voter turnout has not declined at all levels. In the northeastern state of Assam and West Bengal, turnout was 85.5% and 77.5% respectively in phase three.
A member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the Hindu-nationalist group with close ties to the BJP, attributes the lower turnout to the fact that the ruling party has achieved many of its promises in its decade in power and voters are not motivated to come out in large numbers as before. Opposition voters are also not turning out because they consider it unlikely to defeat the ruling party, the person said, asking not to be identified so they can speak freely about internal discussions.
Favorable participation
The State Bank of India said a better measure of India’s voting patterns than turnout rates is the total number of voters. By this measure, the first two phases of elections in India saw 870,000 more voters vote compared to the first two phases of 2019, wrote Soumya Kanti Ghosh, the bank’s chief economic advisor.
“We believe this provides a truer picture of democracy through the free exercise of the right to vote,” Ghosh wrote.
Still, experts often point to participation as a barometer for the health of a democracy. India’s turnout tends to compare favorably with that of developed countries, with the 2019 figure in the average range for Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, according to data from the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance.
The recent drop has spurred a renewed get-out-the-vote effort by Indian election authorities. The Election Commission said last week it had ordered state authorities to come up with plans to increase turnout, saying it was “disappointed” with turnout in places such as “India’s high-tech city” – an apparent reference to falling turnout in Bengaluru.
–With assistance from Swati Gupta.
(Updates with comments from Modi starting in seventh paragraph.)
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