The National Bias of India’s Electoral System (NIAS/SSc/IHD/U/WP/02/2022)

The faith in the complete power of the majority leading to the first-past-the-post (FPTP) system followed in India’s electoral democracy has an inequality built into the relationship between political support and political power. Using vote shares as the measure of political support and seat shares as the extent of political power, this paper argues that due to the rather dispersed nature of votes received by regional and sub-regional level parties, the FPTP electoral system has benefited the national parties over others in terms of converting their votes to seats. However, this pattern need not be a permanent one, as with the growth of further regionalism, regional and local votes get concentrated, improving their ability to convert votes to seats.