Non Committed Voters and Economic Growth: Evidence from India

Abstract

Using actual voting records of simultaneous elections held for Indian federal and regional assemblies-where same political parties contest against each other in both type of elections we identify non-committed voters. These are split ticket voters who vote for different parties in two different but simultaneous election. We find that the representatives supported by such voters outperform significantly with respect to both constituency level outcomes as well as measures based on individual effort. Having controlled for the impact of observable factors, we follow Imbens (2003); Harada (2012) and conduct generalized sensitivity analysis in order to account for the influence of unobservables.

Keywords: Democracy, Legislature, Elections, Performance of Government

JEL Classification: D72, D73, H11