Women Voters in Indian Democracy: A Silent

Revolution

∗ †
Mudit Kapoor and Shamika Ravi

June 27, 2013

Abstract
We discover the trend of steady increase in women voter participation
in Indian elections over time and analyze whether it has any signicant
eect on political outcomes. We compare the turnout of women voters to
men in all state elections from 1962 till 2012. Our analysis reveals a sharp
decline in gender bias in voting over time, across all states, including the
traditionally backward states. This decline is solely driven by increase in
women participation while male turnout remains unchanged over time. We
also nd evidence that women voters are change agents, they vote dierently
from men and aect re-election prospects signicantly.

JEL Classication: P16, J10, J11

Keywords: women voters, gender inequality, re-election outcomes

1 Introduction
The persistence of gender inequality which is embodied in missing women (a

concept developed by Amartya Sen (1990, 1992)) is a common phenomenon in low

income countries. In this paper, we study the gender bias in political participation

by analyzing women voter turnout in Indian democracy from 1962 till 2012 and

∗
mudit_kapoor@isb.edu
†
shamika_ravi@isb.edu

Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2231026

discover a silent revolution. Our analysis reveals striking ndings: (1) There is

a steady and a sharp decline in the gender bias in voting over time. In partic-

ular, we nd that the sex ratio of voters (the number of women voters to every

1000 men voters) increased very impressively from 715 in the 1960s to 883 in the

2000s. (2) This phenomenon of declining gender bias in voting is across all the

states, including the traditionally backward BIMARU states of Bihar, Madhya

Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. (3) This decline is solely driven by the

dramatic increase in women participation in the elections since the 1990s, while

men participation has remained unchanged. (4) We also nd evidence that women

voters are agents of change - they vote dierently from men and have a remarkable

eect on re-election outcomes.

The right to equality in voting is a basic human right in liberal democracy.

The fact that more women are voluntarily exercising their constitutional right of

adult surage across all states in India is testimony to the rise of self-empowerment

of women to secure their fundamental right to freedom of expression. This is an

extraordinary achievement in the world's largest democracy with 717 million voters

of which 342 million voters are women.

Existing literature has documented a signicant gender gap in dierent sectors

including health, labor market opportunities, education and political representa-

tion. Anderson and Ray (2010) provide a decomposition of missing women by age

and cause of death, and their ndings suggest that excess female mortality is a uni-

versal phenomenon and should not be attributed merely to parental preferences.

Duo (2012) provides an excellent overview of the literature by reviewing the re-

lationship between gender inequality and economic development. We contribute

to this literature by documenting the growing political empowerment of women

voters in India and establishing their role as agents of change.

In contrast to existing literature which nds stark persistence in gender in-

equality over time in various outcomes, we report a more positive phenomenon of

sharply declining gender bias in political participation measured by voter turnout.

The reason why this is an important development is because it is not an outcome

of any specic top down policy intervention to raise voter turnout of women, but

is driven by the voluntary act of self empowerment of women.

This paper also diers from the existing research on women and politics in a

Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2231026

fundamental way. While previous works have focused on women as policymakers,

our emphasis is on women as voters in politics. The common apprehension with

policies that promote women leaders is that they may not be as powerful as the

male leaders. Women leaders might eectively be puppets in the hands of their

husbands or local elites. We do not have similar concerns when we study the role of

women as voters in politics. Women enjoy the right to equality in voting, and a vote

is a formal expression of an individual's choice of political parties, representatives

or of broad policies. This is a critical area of research as women voters comprise a

signicant share in any election within a representative democracy.

There is evidence to support that women and men have dierent preferences

over policies. Studying the eect of having women policymakers, Chattopadhyay

and Duo (2004) show that the gender of the village council president impacts the

investments into dierent kinds of public goods. We complement this literature

by studying whether there are dierences in voting decisions of men and women.

We nd strong evidence to support that men and women, indeed vote dierently.

We study the trend of increasing women voter participation in elections and

analyze whether it has any signicant eect on political outcomes. In particular,

we explore whether men and women vote dierently and thereby aect re-election

outcomes. To do this, we exploit a unique setting of re-election of Bihar state

assembly elections in 2005. When the assembly election was held in Bihar, in

February of 2005, no political party emerged as a winner to form the government.

As a result of this, re-elections were held within eight months, in October 2005.

We compare outcomes of all 243 assembly constituencies in Bihar for both the

elections which were held within a short period of time. The results reveal that

in 35 percent of the constituencies, there was a change in the election outcome.

In these constituencies, the winning political party of the February election was

not re-elected in October, and a new political party was declared the winner.

As a result of this massive change in election outcomes, a new government was

formed in Bihar. Our analysis shows that this change in the election outcomes

was fundamentally brought about by the women voters. Our study adds to an

important and growing literature on the re-election prospects of political parties

such as Brender and Drazen (2008).

For our analysis, we use constituency level data from the Election Commission

3
of India (ECI). We analyze all state assembly elections held from 1962 till 2012,

for 16 large states. These 16 states together represent more than 93 percent of the

total electors in India. This is a rich data set which has been used by earlier papers

that have explored women's political participation and crime (Iyer et al., 2012),

how voters respond to criminal charges of candidates (Dutta and Gupta, 2012)

and relationship of growth to election outcomes in India (Gupta and Panagariya,

2012).

The rest of the paper is organized in the following manner: we describe struc-

ture of Indian democracy in section 2 and the data in section 3. In the data section,

we describe the construction of variables of interest from the Election Commission

data. The results are analyzed in section 4 where we begin by describing the

consistent trends of reducing gender gap in voter turnout in all states. We then

explore whether men and women vote dierently by studying the 2005 re-elections

in the state of Bihar. We discuss these ndings in section 5 and conclude in section

6.

2 Indian Democracy
India is a federal union of states, it is a Sovereign Socialist Democratic Republic

with a parliamentary form of government. The Republic of India is governed in

terms of the Constitution of India that came into force on the 26th of January,

1950. The parliament consists of the President who is the executive head of the

union and the two houses known as the Council of States (Rajya Sabha) and

the House of the People (Lok Sabha). According to the constitution the real

executive power is vested in the Council of Ministers with Prime Minister as its

head to advise the President who shall discharge his functions in accordance to the

advise. The Council of Ministers are collectively responsible to the Lok Sabha.

The Constitutional right of adult surage is granted to every Indian citizen

above the age of eighteen. The President by notication will call upon the par-

liamentary constituencies to elect members of the Lok Sabha and thereafter the

electors of the parliamentary constituency will directly elect the members of the

Lok Sabha on the basis of adult surage. The constitution stipulates that normal

term of the Lok Sabha members is 5 years unless the President dissolves the House

4
of the people earlier. The rst general election in India was held in 1951 - 1952

and so far 17 elections to the House of the People have been held. At present there

are 543 members in the Lok Sabha.

India is a federal country with 28 states and 7 union territories (UTs) which

are centrally administered. Every state and the UTs has a legislative assembly and

Governor is the head of the state, however, in some states there is also an upper

house called the State Legislative Council. The executive power of the state is

vested in the Governor who is advised by the Council of Ministers with the Chief

Minister as its head. The Council of Minsters of a state is collectively responsible to

the legislative assembly of the state. The election to the state legislative assembly

is held in the similar manner as the Lok Sabha with state and UTs divided into

single-member assembly constituencies. The normal term for the members of the

state legislative assembly is 5 years. The largest state legislative assembly is for

Uttar Pradesh with 403 members and the smallest is Pondicherry with 30 members.

The rst state assembly elections were held in 1951 - 1952.

The Constitution distributes legislative powers between the Parliament and the

State legislatures. For example, all matters relating to defense of India is subject

to the control of the Parliament while public order and police in the state are

subject to the control of the state/UTs legislative assembly.

3 Data
The Constitution of India has vested the Election Commission of India (ECI)

to oversee, direct and control the entire process of the conduct of free and fair

elections to the Parliament and the Legislative Assembly of the states/UTs. The

ECI is a permanent constitutional body that was established in 1950.

The ECI collects and documents election data for each and every parliamentary

and the state assembly constituency. For each constituency it reports data on the

total number of electors and voters which are segregated by gender, the name and

gender of each candidate contesting the election, party aliation of each contestant

and if the candidate is not aliated to any party then the candidate is categorized

as an independent, and the total number votes secured by each candidate in the

election. This data is available for every general election held in the parliamentary

5
and the state assembly constituency from 1951 till 2012.

For our analysis we use data at the constituency level for the state assembly

elections held for 16 large states from 1962 till 2012. These 16 large states rep-

resent more than 93 percent of the total electors in India. Next we describe the

construction of the variables of interest using the data at the constituency level.

PNs !
i=1 f emale votersit
sex ratio of votersst = PNs × 1000, (1)
i=1 male votersit

PNs !
i=1 f emale electorsit
sex ratio of electorsst = PNs × 1000, (2)
i=1 male electorsit

PNs !
i=1 f emale votersit
f emale poll percentst = PNs × 100, (3)
i=1 f emale electorsit

PNs !
i=1 male votersit
male poll percentst = PNs × 100, (4)
i=1 male electorsit

where s is the state, t is the year in which the election is held for the state assembly,

i is the assembly constituency in state s, and Ns is the total number of assembly

constituencies in state s. In Table 1 we summarize the years in which the assembly

elections were held in each state.

Insert T able 1 here

4 Results
The rst set of results are summarized in Table 2a and Table 2b. Before we explain

the results it is important to describe how we construct the average sex ratio of

voters for every state for the elections held in each of the decades from 1960s till

2000s. We illustrate this with the help of an example. In Uttar Pradesh (UP) in

the decade of 1960s 3 state elections were held in 1962, 1967 and 1969 and in each

of these elections the sex ratio of the voters was 538, 675, and 629 respectively. So

we compute the simple mean of these three sex ratios of the voters which is 614

and dene that as the average sex ratio of the voters in the 1960s in UP. For each

6
state we do a similar computation for all the decades. Our results reveal a very

interesting pattern - for every state from 1960s to 2000s there has been a signicant

improvement in the sex ratio of the voters, however, in Haryana and Tamil Nadu

the improvement is marginal compared to other states. Some of the largest gains

happened in the poorest states of India the so called BIMARU states of Bihar,

Madhya Pradesh (MP), Rajasthan and UP. However, we do also observe that there

is a signicant variations in the sex ratio of the voters across the states.

In sharp contrast when we look at the average sex ratio of the electors we do

not observe a similar pattern. As a matter of fact there are some states for which

the sex ratio of electors has marginally worsened from the 1960s till the 2000s.

This suggests that increase in the sex ratio of the voters is not driven by more

women relative to men registering to vote but it is driven by the fact that more

women relative to men are casting their vote in the elections.

Insert T ables 2a and 2b here

We also plot the sex ratio of voters and electors for every state over the election

years. As expected we observe that the trend in the sex ratio of the voters is

positive for all the states, however, for Haryana and Tamil Nadu (TN) it is more

or less at. In sharp contrast, the trend in the sex ratio of the electors for most

of the states remains more or less at with the exception of Haryana where it has

declined.

Insert F igures 1a to 1c here

Next we do a simple regression analysis to analyze the trends in the sex ratio

of voters and electors. We also do a similar regression analysis for the female and

the male poll percent. In particular we run the following regression:

yst = state dummies + β1 post70 + β2 post80 + β3 post90 + β4 post00 + εst , (5)

where yst is the outcome variable of interest: (1) sex ratio of voters, (2) sex ratio of

electors, (3) female poll percent, and (4) male poll percent. The subscript s is the
state, t is the year in which the election is held for the state assembly. post70 is a
dummy variable which equals 1 if the state elections are held on or after the year

7
1970 and before the year 1980, post80 is a dummy variable which equals 1 if the

state elections are held on or after the year 1980 and before the year 1990, post90
is a dummy variable which equals 1 if the state elections are held on or after the

year 1990 and before the year 2000, post00 is a dummy variable which equals 1 if

the state elections are held on or after the year 2000. εst is the error term.

The results of our regression analysis are in Table 3 from column (1) to column

(8). In column (1) and column (2) of the table we report the results for sex ratio

of the voters with and without the state xed eects respectively. From column

(1) we note that in the 1960s the average sex ratio of the voters was 715 and it

increased signicantly by 168 points to 883 in the 2000s. This is the key nding of

the paper. The results are very similar when we control for the state xed eects.

In particular, from column (2) we see that the sex ratio of the voters has increased

very signicantly over time and has improved for every successive decade. When we

compare the 1960s to 1970s we note that the sex ratio of the voters went up by 45,

from 1970s to 1980s it improved by 28, it further went up by 30 from 1980s to 1990s

and it improved dramatically by 52 when we compare 1990s to 2000s. This results

reect the main point of our paper that gender bias in voting has declined very

signicantly over time. In column (3) and column (4) we report results for the sex

ratio of electors with and without the state xed eects respectively. We nd that

that the sex ratio of the electors has remained more or less the same throughout

the decades. This suggests that more women relative to men are casting their

votes in election. We directly test this by looking at the female and the male voter

turnout. The results for women voter turnout are reported in column (5) and

column (6) with and without the state xed eects respectively. Our results show

that over time the female poll percentage has increased very signicantly and it

has been increasing decade after decade. The rising trend started in the 1980s and

picked up momentum in the 1990s and 2000s. In sharp contrast when we look at

the men voter turnout (results in column (7) and column (8) with and without the

state xed eects respectively) we do not observe a similar pattern. In fact the

men poll percent has remained stable through the decades while increasing only

marginally in the 2000s, however, it is not signicant at the conventional 5 percent

level of signicance. This result conrms that more women relative to men are

turning out to vote in the elections. This voluntary act of self-empowerment is the

8
key driving force in reducing the gender bias in voting.

Insert T able 3 here

We then repeat the same regression analysis as above on a restricted sample

by only considering the poorest states of India the so called BIMARU states of

Bihar, MP, Rajasthan and UP. Our results are very similar to the previous analysis.

In particular we nd that in the BIMARU states gender bias has declined very

dramatically over time and this phenomenon is driven by the fact that more women

relative to men are turning out to vote in the elections.

Insert T able 4 here

The data has conclusively shown that over time, the increase in the female

voter turnout is signicant, in all the 16 states. The next line of enquiry then, is

to understand if this steady increase in women participation has aected election

outcomes in any systematic way.

4.1 Women Voters as Agents of Change

In this section, we ask whether women vote dierently from men. In particular, we

analyze whether re-election prospects are aected dierently by men and women

voters. To address this, we study two closely held elections in the state of Bihar

in 2005. Bihar is one of the largest and the poorest states in India. In terms of

the total number of electors, Bihar is the 4th largest state in India with 55 million

electors which is approximately 8 percent of total electors in India.

In February of 2005, state assembly elections were held in 243 constituencies

in Bihar. The election was very closely contested but no political party emerged

as a clear winner to form the state government. As a result of this, Presidents

rule was declared in the state, the state assembly was dissolved and re-elections

were held in all the 243 constituencies, eight months later in October of 2005. The

re-election results revealed a change in the winning party in 87 (36 percent) of the

243 constituencies. This change was sucient for one particular party to emerge

as the winner in the state, and formation of a new government. This setting of a

9
re-election which was held within a short span of time provides us with a natural

experiment, to study the impact of change in women voters vis-a-vis in men voters

on the re-election prospects at the constituency level.

We start by making two important observations: Firstly, From February to

October, the female poll percent increased from 42.5 percent to 44.5 percent while

the male poll percent declined from 50 percent to 47 percent (see gures 2 and 3).

Secondly, the mean growth rate of female voters was almost 3 times more in the

constituencies where political parties were not re-elected when compared to those

constituencies where political parties were re-elected. In sharp contrast, the mean

growth rates of male voters across the two types of constituencies were similar (see

Table 5). The two observations put together imply that not only did more women

cast their votes in the re-election, but that on average, they voted for change in

the political parties.

Insert F igures 2, 3 and T able 5 here

Next we analyze the distribution of the growth rates of female and male voters,

and study if they are dierent in constituencies where outcomes changed in the re-

election. In gures 4a and 4b, we plot the kernel densities of female and male voters

growth rates in the two types of constituencies: (1) the constituencies where the

same party was re-elected and (2) constituencies where political parties were not

re-elected and there was a new winner. We nd that the distribution of the growth

rates of female voters in these two types of constituencies are very dierent. In

sharp contrast, the distribution of male voters in the two groups of constituencies

are similar. We run the Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests of equality of distributions and

conclude that while the growth rates of female voters are statistically dierent for

the two types of constituencies, they are statistically similar for the male voters.

This conrms our hypothesis that women voters caused the change in outcomes

in these elections.

Insert F igures 4a and 4b here

We test the re-election prospects at the constituency level more rigorously next.

In particular, we study the eect of the growth rate in female voters and the growth

10
rate in male voters between February and October 2005, on the probability of re-

election at the constituency level using the PROBIT estimation. In our estimation

we also control for district eects (there are 38 districts in the state and on an

average each district has 6 to 7 assembly constituencies). Our results are reported

in Table 6. In column (1) we report the results without district xed eects and

in column (2) we report results with district xed eects. The results clearly show

that the coecient on the growth rate in female voters is negative and signicant,

while the coecient on the growth rate in male voters is positive and signicant.

Our results strongly suggest that growth rate in female voters had a negative eect

on the probability of re-election while the growth rate in the male voters had a

positive eect on the probability of re-election. To ensure that our results are not

driven by any multi-collinearity we look at the correlation between the growth

rate in female and male voters. The correlation is 0.64 which is less than 0.9 and

therefore, it is safe to rule out multi-collinearity. The pseudo R2 is comparable

to other studies that have analyzed the re-election prospects (Brender and Drazen

(2008)).

The eects of growth rate in female and male voters that we nd are not only

statistically signicant but are also substantial quantitatively. In particular, when

we look at the marginal eects in Table 7, we nd that 1 percentage point increase

in the growth rate of female voters reduces the probability of re-election by 1.4 to 2

percentage points. In contrast, for every 1 percentage point increase in the growth

rate of male voters raises the probability of re-election by 1.3 to 1.5 percentage

point.

Insert T ables 6 and 7 here

Next, we compute the predicted probability of re-election, for dierent growth

rates of female and male voters. In gure 5, we show that the predicted proba-

bility of re-election declines as the growth rate of female voters increases. This

is calculated keeping the growth rate of male voters xed at the mean value. It

is evident from gure 5, that as the growth rate of female voters increases from

-10.2 (10th percentile) towards 13.9 (90th percentile), the predicted probability

of re-election falls steadily from 0.87 to 0.39. In sharp contrast, when we look at

11
the predicted probability of re-election with increases in the growth rate of male

voters, we nd the opposite eect. As gure 6 shows, the predicted probability

of re-election increases steadily from 0.48 to 0.79 when the growth rate of male

voters increases from -18.5 (10th percentile) to 2 (90th percentile).

Insert F igures 5 and 6 here

Together, these results conrm that men and women voted very dierently in

these elections. They aected the re-election prospects of political parties very

distinctly. More specically, women voters were the agents of change in this con-

text.

5 Discussion
Previous research on female empowerment have analyzed varying outcomes of in-

terest. Some of these include intrahousehold decision making (Ashraf, 2009), lead-

ership in politics (Beaman et al, 2009 and Chattopadhyay et al, 2004), access to

nance (De Mel et al, 2009), and seeking healthcare (Rai and Ravi, 2011). This

paper contributes to the existing literature on female empowerment by analyzing

the role of women as voters in a democratic system. It is a critical area of research

as women voters comprise a signicant share in any election within a representa-

tive democracy. And a vote is a formal expression of an individual's choice for a

particular candidate or political party.

There is vast literature in politics which establishes the the necessity of uni-

versal surage for representative democracy. And yet, while advocating universal

surage, James Mill argued that in order to keep expense of representative system

down, women need not have separate voting rights because their interests were

included within those of their husbands and fathers (Alan Ryan, 2012). This was

later criticised by T.B. Macaulay who said, Without taking the trouble to perplex

the issue with a single sophism, he calmly dogmatises away the interests of half

the human race. Our research in this paper establishes that interests of half the

human race (female voters) are not merely signicant but also distinct from the

interest of the other half (male voters) and is reected in their voting behavior.

12
 We study the data on Indian elections over the last 50 years and explore the

role of women voters. We nd systematic reduction in the gender bias in vot-

ing, over time and across all states of India. We interpret this as testimony to

self empowerment of women voters. The results of the Bihar re-elections of 2005,

which were held within a short period of 8 months, showed that women voted

dierently from men and signicantly aected the re-election prospects of political

parties. This suggests that men and women have dierent preferences and accord-

ingly, express these in their voting behavior. These ndings strongly complement

Chattopadhyay and Duo (2004) who show that men and women dier in their

preferences as policy makers.

So far, we have focused on documenting this silent revolution and exploring the

implications it has for political outcomes. As an extension to this work, we are also

interested in exploring the relationship between this form of women empowerment

and economic development. In particular, we would like to understand what are

the underlying factors driving this surge in female voter turnouts across all states

of India, consistently over past decades.

6 Conclusion
Existing research has shown persistent gender inequality in outcomes including

health, education, labor force participation and political representation. Perhaps

for the rst time, we discover a signicant and persistent reduction in gender in-

equality when we analyze voter turnout in all state elections in India, over past 50

years. This is a positive and encouraging trend in Indian politics. Particularly, as

this improvement does not seem to be brought about by a deliberate top down

policy action but largely due to voluntary participation of women voters in elec-

tions. That is the reason, we term this phenomenon as one of self-empowerment.

In order to understand whether this positive development has an impact on

election outcomes, we study the Bihar state re-elections of 2005, which were held

within a short span. Our results strongly suggest that an increase in the female

voters turnout negatively eected the probability of re-election for a political party

in a given constituency. And in contrast, the results also show that male voters

increased the probability of re-election of political parties, in a given constituency.

13
The two results together show that men and women voted dierently. While

women voted for change, the men voted for status quo. These results highlight

the signicant role of rising women voters in modern representative democracy.

14
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16
Table 1: States and the Election Years

                   
States Election Years        

Andhra Pradesh   1972 1967  1962

2009 2004 1999 1994 1989 1985 1983 1978
Assam 2011 2006 2001 1996 1991 1985 1983 1978 1972 1967 1962
2010 Oct 2005 Feb 2005 2000 1995 1990 1985 1980 1977
Bihar
1972 1969 1967 1962
Gujarat   1972 1967  1962
2007 2002 1998 1995 1990 1985 1980 1975
Haryana 2009 2005 2000 1996 1991 1987 1982 1977 1972 1968 1967
Himachal Pradesh 2007 2003 1998 1993 1990 1985 1982 1977 1972 1967
Karnataka 2008 2004 1999 1994 1989 1985 1983 1978 1972 1967 1962
2011 2006 2001 1996 1991 1987 1982 1980 1977 1970 1967
Kerala
1965
Madhya Pradesh   1972 1967  1962
2008 2003 1998 1993 1990 1985 1980 1977
Maharashtra 2009 2004 1999 1995 1990 1985 1980 1978 1972 1967 1962
Orissa 2009 2004 2000 1995 1990 1985 1980 1977 1974 1971 1967
2012 2007 2002 1997 1992 1985 1980 1977 1972 1969 1967
Punjab
1962
Rajasthan   1972 1967  1962
2008 2003 1998 1993 1990 1985 1980 1977
Tamil Nadu 2011 2006 2001 1996 1991 1989 1984 1980 1977 1971 1967
2012 2007 2002 1996 1993 1991 1989 1985 1980 1977 1974
Uttar Pradesh
1969 1967 1962
2011 2006 20011996 1991 1987 1982 1977   1972 1971 1969
 
West Bengal
1967 1962
               

17
Table 2a: Average Sex Ratio of the Voters

States 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s

Andhra Pradesh 886 910 917 924 971

Assam 620 716 780 868 896
Bihar 567 573 625 701 783
Gujarat 786 824 799 824 853
Haryana 807 806 806 815 810
Himachal Pradesh 675 802 957 970 1029
Karnataka 797 843 856 886 913
Kerala 981 1034 1017 1027 1046
Madhya Pradesh 558 677 677 730 804
Maharashtra 794 853 823 859 855
Orissa 572 639 679 802 866
Punjab 777 810 810 793 904
Rajasthan 603 745 735 760 861
Tamil Nadu 949 917 926 923 961
Uttar Pradesh 614 667 660 671 761
West Bengal 670 707 831 880 886

Table 2b: Average Sex Ratio of the Electors

States 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s

Andhra Pradesh 996 1011 997 1000 1018

Assam 831 855 869 897 932
Bihar 884 897 894 878 867
Gujarat 941 970 973 946 943
Haryana 881 888 875 857 838
Himachal Pradesh 947 943 1008 983 971
Karnataka 954 957 970 964 966
Kerala 1025 1020 1025 1041 1075
Madhya Pradesh 988 990 977 937 906
Maharashtra 934 955 948 923 913
Orissa 923 925 912 886 937
Punjab 846 854 837 872 906
Rajasthan 922 938 908 894 910
Tamil Nadu 1016 987 976 984 998
Uttar Pradesh 846 850 830 821 827
West Bengal 796 794 875 901 912

18
Figure 1a: Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh

19
Figure 1b: Southern States

20
Figure 1c: Remaining Large States

21
 Table 3: Regression Analysis
 
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)
Female Female
Sex Ratio Sex Ratio Sex Ratio Sex Ratio Male Poll Male Poll
Poll Poll
of Voters of Voters of Electors of Electors Percent Percent
Percent Percent

post70 53.6* 45.1*** 17.1 7.88 1.80 1.59 -1.11 -1.27

(30.1) (15.7) (16.9) (7.13) (2.95) (1.93) (1.66) (1.46)
post80 100.3*** 73.1*** 30.5* 9.68 5.19 3.96* -0.18 -0.89
(30.1) (14.7) (16.2) (6.05) (3.18) (2.06) (2.01) (1.67)
post90 119.0*** 104.0*** 24.4 2.01 8.05*** 8.80*** 1.50 1.97
(29.5) (16.5) (15.9) (6.31) (3.01) (2.54) (1.99) (2.05)

22
post00 168.0*** 156.4*** 25.2 16.0** 12.7*** 12.1*** 2.81 2.45*
(27.2) (16.4) (16.1) (7.43) (2.73) (1.88) (1.77) (1.45)
Constant 715.1*** 846.2*** 903.2*** 996.4*** 52.7*** 60.5*** 65.8*** 71.1***
(23.2) (15.7) (12.4) (5.65) (2.23) (1.88) (1.15) (1.44)
State Fixed
N Y N Y N Y N Y
Effects
Adj-R2 0.218 0.823 0.025 0.850 0.135 0.615 0.028 0.390
Observations 176 176 176 176 176 176 176 176
Note: Standard errors in parentheses, * p<0.10 ** p<0.05 *** p<0.01
post70 is a dummy variable which equals 1 if the state elections are held on or after the year 1970 and before the year 1980 and 0 otherwise,
post80 is a dummy variable which equals 1 if the state elections are held on or after the year 1980 and before the year 1990 and 0 otherwise,
post90 is a dummy variable which equals 1 if the state elections are held on or after the year 1990 and before the year 2000 and 0 otherwise,
post00 is a dummy variable which equals 1 if the state elections are held on or after the year 2000 and 0 otherwise.
 Table 4: Regression Analysis for the “BIMARU” States
 
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)
Female Female
Sex Ratio Sex Ratio Sex Ratio Sex Ratio Male Poll Male Poll
Poll Poll
of Voters of Voters of Electors of Electors Percent Percent
Percent Percent

post70 80.6** 68.8** 20.0 9.59 4.55* 3.65 0.41 -0.31

(32.0) (27.8) (27.0) (5.74) (2.59) (2.52) (1.75) (1.75)
post80 87.8*** 77.8*** -4.33 -7.77 3.63 2.84 -3.04 -3.31
(25.5) (24.2) (27.1) (6.78) (2.32) (2.53) (2.14) (2.22)
post90 136.4*** 119.3*** -9.75 -27.9*** 12.8*** 11.5*** 4.00*** 2.81
(24.9) (26.2) (23.4) (6.23) (2.22) (2.47) (1.39) (1.73)

23
post00 209.8*** 206.2*** -27.8 -29.9*** 15.0*** 14.7*** -0.59 -0.85
(31.4) (31.5) (21.7) (8.08) (3.41) (3.24) (3.22) (2.98)
Constant 585.0*** 596.2*** 898.6*** 970.1*** 40.0*** 40.3*** 61.0*** 64.6***
(21.0) (30.1) (18.9) (8.03) (1.94) (2.97) (0.93) (1.91)
State Fixed
N Y N Y N Y N Y
Effects
Adj-R2 0.604 0.725 0.097 0.925 0.516 0.610 0.135 0.319
Observations 47 47 47 47 47 47 47 47
Note: Standard errors in parentheses, * p<0.10 ** p<0.05 *** p<0.01
post70 is a dummy variable which equals 1 if the state elections are held on or after the year 1970 and before the year 1980 and 0 otherwise,
post80 is a dummy variable which equals 1 if the state elections are held on or after the year 1980 and before the year 1990 and 0 otherwise,
post90 is a dummy variable which equals 1 if the state elections are held on or after the year 1990 and before the year 2000 and 0 otherwise,
post00 is a dummy variable which equals 1 if the state elections are held on or after the year 2000 and 0 otherwise.
Figure 2: Female and Male Poll Percent in Bihar State Re-election in 2005

52  

50  
50  

48  
47  

46  
44.5  

44  
42.5  

42  

40  

38  
Female Poll Percent Male Poll Percent

Feb-2005 Oct-2005

Figure 3: Kernel density of the Growth Rate of Female and Male Voters between
February 2005 and October 2005

24
Table 5: Comparison of the Mean and Median Growth Rates

Constituencies Constituencies
Same Party Same Party
Not Re-elected Re-elected

Growth Rate of Female Voters

Mean 4.1 1.4
Median 4.6 2.9

Growth Rate of Male Voters

Mean -7.9 -7.5
Median -7.4 -6.9
           

Figure 4a: Kernel Densities of Female Voters Growth Rate, for

Constituencies where Party was Re-elected and Constituencies where Party
was Not Re-elected

Note: The Kolmogorov – Smirnov test rejects the equality of the two distribution functions

25
Figure 4b: Kernel Densities of Male Voters Growth Rate, for Constituencies
where Party was Re-elected and Constituencies where Party was Not Re-
elected

Note: The Kolmogorov – Smirnov test does not reject the equality of the two distribution
functions

26
Table 6: The Effect of Change in Women Voters and Men Voters on the
Probability of Re-election

Dependent Variable:
(1) (2)
RE-ELECTION

Growth Rate in Female Voters -0.04*** -0.06***

(0.01) (0.02)

Growth Rate in Male Voters 0.03** 0.04**

(0.013) (0.02)

Constant 0.73*** 1.07*

(0.15) (0.56)

District Fixed Effects N Y

Pseudo R2 0.03 0.12

Akaike's criteria 312.8 341.8
Schwartz's criteria 323.3 469.3
Observations 243 232

Standard errors in parentheses

* p<0.10 ** p<0.05 *** p<0.001

Table 7: Marginal Effects on the Probability of Re-election

Variables (1) (2)

   
 
Growth Rate in Female Voters -1.4*** -2.0***
(0.004) (0.006)
 
 
Growth Rate in Male Voters 1.3**   1.5**
(0.005) (0.007)
 
 
District Fixed Effects N   Y

Note: This is the change in the probability of re-election (in percent) for 1
unit increase in the variables.
Standard errors in parentheses. * p<0.10 ** p<0.05 *** p<0.01

   
   

27
Figure 5: The Effect of Growth Rate of Female Voters on Predicted Probability of Re-
election

1  
Predicted Probability of Re-election

0.9  
0.8  
0.7  
0.6  
0.5  
0.4  
0.3  
0.2  
0.1  
0  
-10.2 (10th -3.2 (25th 3.8 (50th 8.9 (75th 13.9 (90th
Percentile) Percentile) Percentile) Percentile) Percentile)
Growth Rate

Note: The Growth Rate of the Male Voters is set at the mean value

Figure 6: The Effect of Growth Rate of Male Voters on Predicted Probability of Re-
election

0.9
Predicted Probability of Re-election

0.8

0.7

0.6

0.5

0.4

0.3

0.2

0.1

0
-18.5 (10th -11.6 (25th -7.0 (50th -2.5 (75th 2.0 (90th
Percentile) Percentile) Percentile) Percentile) Percentile)
Growth Rate

Note: The Growth Rate of the Female Voters is set at the Mean Value

28