Mobile campaign causes decline in votes of candidates facing murder charges

The Election Commission of India made it compulsory for candidates to advertise their criminal antecedents on TV and in newspapers at least thrice during electioneering

A study that sent four voter information messages on the mobile phones of randomly-selected voters in more than 3,800 villages in Uttar Pradesh in the run up to the 2017 assembly elections found a drop of 12% in votes cast for candidates facing criminal charges, which amounted to a 3-percentage-point decline in their vote-share.

This decline in vote-share is significant because in nearly 20% of the seats contested across UP in 2017, the winner was decided by a margin of 3 percentage points or less, the study, Coordinating Voters against Criminal Politicians: Evidence from a Mobile Experiment in