In With the New and Out With the Old: Party System Change and Turnout in India

Does the nature of political competition influence voter turnout? Whereas prior research exploring this link focuses on the number of parties and the competitiveness of races, we hypothesize that the entry and exit of parties should also affect turnout. Building on research on the costs of voting and voting as a habit, we identify and test three hypotheses linking party system change to turnout. First, we expect that turnout should decrease when major parties exit the party system, as some set of voters can no longer vote for their preferred party and must engage in costly information gathering if they wish to vote. Second, we expect that the entry of new parties should have a positive effect on turnout as new parties mobilize previously unengaged voters or those with tenuous partisan loyalties. Third, the entry of credible independent candidates should have a similarly positive influence on turnout. We test these hypotheses on district-level data from Indian national elections from 1977 through 2004. Regression analysis using fixed effects models reveals consistent evidence in favor of all three hypotheses.