Electoral College explained in Indian context

The US presidential elections concluded last year. Result: Joe Biden won 302 electors while Donald Trump won 232 electors. Joe Biden won by a margin of 13%. The vote count for Biden was 81 million and Trump received 74 million i.e., margin of seven million votes or just 5%. Why is the margin of victory different when both are results of the same election? It was even drastic in 2016 presidential election when Trump won by margin of 14% but surprisingly, it was Clinton who had more votes casted in her favour. Earlier in 2000 President George W. Bush won by a slight margin of 1% but his opponent Al Gore was the one with more vote count.

Why there were such anomalies?

Let us begin by understanding how does an Electoral College works. On the election day, a voter would go to the polling station and opt for the name of their preferred candidate and come back home. The candidate with the greatest number of votes wins. This is the simplest way to elect the president and is known as ‘popular vote’. In India that is not how we choose our Prime Minister. In India, each state is divided into constituency and can have multiple constituencies based on the population. Uttar Pradesh, for example has 80 constituencies. On the voting day voters vote for their preferred candidate in their constituency. The candidate with highest number of votes wins a seat in parliament and is referred as Member of Parliament (MP). These MPs from all constituencies then get together and vote for Prime Minister and party / coalition winning majority seats in parliament forms the government and gets to choose the Prime Minister.

Similarly, in US presidential elections, the voters do not directly vote for the President but instead they select delegates or electors for their district. Based on population, each state in US is divided in various districts formally referred as Congressional District akin to what we have in India as Lok Sabha Constituency. Most populated state California has 53 districts. The key difference in Indian general election and US presidential election is that in India states have no role to play, however in US, states follow a winner-takes-it-all approach. Total number of votes in each state is compiled and party / candidate with the greatest number of votes in the state wins all electors from that state. For example, in 2020 President Joe Biden won more votes than President Donald Trump in New York and thus won all 29 out of total 29 electors from that state. This is the cause for magnified margins. Joe Biden just by winning 1% extra votes led to a difference of 5% electors.

Electoral College system in Indian election

Let us examine the impact of Electoral College system in Indian election. The dashboard below has the results of Lok Sabha election in India from year 1998 to 2020. Results are summed up using three different counting system: 1) Electoral College, as followed in US presidential election; 2) Constituencies, as followed in Indian general election; and 3) Popular Vote, representing which candidate/party received most votes. Remember party or coalition having majority (50%) votes in second pie chart (Constituencies) has formed the government. First (Electoral College) and Third (Popular Votes) pie charts represent how the results would have been had we followed a different system. A further breakdown at state level is represented in the fourth and fifth charts. The fourth chart represents the number of constituencies won by a party in a selected state in comparison to number of votes fetched as represented in the fifth chart. Note that in the electoral college system, the party with maximum votes would have won all the electors in that state.

Exploring the dashboard:

In the 2019 elections, the BJP won 37% of the popular vote which led to victory on 56% of the seats and a clear majority to the government. If the electoral college system was followed, the victory margin would be even bigger with BJP winning 66% of seats. What led to this amplification of margin? Uttar Pradesh. If we look at Uttar Pradesh state elections for the same year, BJP won majority votes which means that as per EC it should have secured 80 seats but won only 62, thus the magnification. In the year 2014 too, BJP which secured 71 seats in the same state which would 80 as per the EC count. In fact, UP being the biggest state would have been the biggest cause of anomaly in case of EC system.

Let us see if you can find out other big battle ground states. Hint 1: This state would have played a major role in 2009 and 2004 elections in presence of Electoral College system. Hint 2: BJP had whitewashed its main opponent in this state in 2014 and 2019 elections. If you spot the key states, please mention them in the comments section.

Conclusion

The popular vote system although seems to be a simple and straightforward approach, it has a limitation that less populated areas will be ignored, and parties would focus their efforts only on densely populated areas to garner as many votes as possible.

Electoral College voting has a glaring limitation of magnification. The states with high competition due to presence of demographies with diverse political affiliation get all the campaigning focus. When the margin of votes becomes less, persuading even a small number of people to switch can make the difference in electors due to magnification. These states which alter their political affiliation every few years are known as swing states.

Selection of MP from each constituency maintains a balanced approach among the three. It ensures appropriate representation of less dense regions while at the same time respecting the choice of majority. This system has its limitations too. For instance, it is most susceptible to political gerrymandering which is altering the boundaries of constituencies in a way that election would favour a particular party.

How gerrymandering works and where it has been used in past would be a great idea for another post.