Lok Sabha elections: Incumbents constesting may be at 47-year low

With less than a week to go for poll results, Business Standard tracks the long-term trends on the political churn in Parliament in the first of a two-part series

Fewer candidates may be fighting for re-election in nearly five decades.

2019 saw 337 people who won in 2014 fighting for re-election. The provisional numbers from data collated by the Delhi-based Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) suggest 324 incumbents this year. This would be the lowest figure since 1977, according to historical data from Ashoka University’s Trivedi Centre for Political Data.

Anti-incumbency refers to the phenomenon of voting out existing elected representatives in favour of new ones.

Of the 337 candidates who were members of Parliament (MPs) contesting elections five years ago, around 67 per cent emerged victorious.This success rate is the highest since the 1970s.

The previous high in 42 years was in 1984, when Rajiv Gandhi became the Prime Minister, winning over 400 seats, following the assassination of his mother Indira Gandhi. Only 64.6 per cent of the contesting incumbents won at that time.

 

State-wise numbers show variation. The top ten states in terms of the number of seats include Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, among others. Gujarat re-elected 100 per cent of its incumbent candidates in 2019. It was zero per cent in Tamil Nadu.

Parties tend to repeat candidates with competitive populism, believes Pramod Kumar, chairperson of the Institute for Development and Communication. Issues of criminality and charges of corruption are not major considerations for parties when choosing to repeat candidates, he says.
 

“Winnability is the only criteria. Political parties have become dharamshalas (public shelters) without doors and any leader who can win is welcome,” Kumar elaborates.

Data on cross-country incumbency strike rate is limited. A 2023 paper titled ‘Legislative Resources, Corruption, and Incumbency,’ published in the British Journal of Political Science analysed incumbent re-election rates across 68 democracies with populations exceeding four million.

Legislative incumbency data was collected from 2000 to 2018.

A smaller share of India’s parliament typically consists of people who are re-elected, according to the paper. The share of the re-elected representatives is over 80 per cent in countries like the UK and Japan. It has been less than 25 per cent in India.

“Several factors may explain why India falls on the lower end of this spectrum. Cross-national comparisons suggest that India's lower incumbency strike rate could be linked to higher perceptions of corruption, by the public, and comparatively greater allocation of resources to individual legislators. For India, the latest data for elections was taken till 2014. While India may not offer high salaries to legislators compared to other countries, our dataset indicates a well-developed committee system where members can serve on multiple committees,” says Charles McClean, Japan Foundation Postdoctoral Associate and Incoming Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yale University, one of the co-authors of the paper.

“Though the staff size is not extensive, it is above average. A potential reason for a shift in this situation could be a reduction in the perceived corruption levels or possibly restrictions on legislators using resources to facilitate corruption,” McClean adds.