Part 1: How much does your vote count?

Republished from my LinkedIn articles

 

Note: This post is not political in nature. It's an amateur mathematical exercise.

Your vote is precious & every vote counts.

But do you think every vote counts equally? 

Well, may be not.

I collected data from the Election Commission of India's 2014 election report (as 2019 data will be published next year) & did a quick analysis. Here's what I found -

1. In 2014 LS elections, there were 83,40,82,814 eligible electors for 543 seats. So, an average of 15,36,064 electors per seat (see graph below). Thus, if a state has higher than average electors per seat, a vote cast there would have lower electoral power, and vice versa.
2. Uttar Pradesh (UP), the state with highest number of seats @80, also has the highest number of electors per seat @17,35,132. This means that a vote cast in UP accounts to 13% less compared to the national average. After UP, electors in Rajasthan (12%) & Maharashtra (9.6%) have the lowest electoral power.
3. Union territories (UT), with the exception of National Capital, and the hilly states have the lowest numbers of electors per seat. Meaning that each vote cast there has a higher than average electoral power.
4. If we exclude hilly states & UTs, electorates in Kerala have the highest electoral power - as much as 20.8% higher than national average. Odisha (9.5%) & Tamil Nadu (8%) are the next highest.
5. Andhra Pradesh (then inclusive of Telangana) is closest to the national average when it comes to electoral power. I suspect that political gerrymandering played a crucial role during the state's division in 2014. Would be interesting to see the current numbers.

 

More disparities can be found if we do this analysis at a seat level (which shall be covered in part 2 of this post); so elector power can vary greatly within a particular state. But besides the obvious political reasons, there are factors like geography, local economy, urbanization, population growth rates, migration, etc.. A longitudinal study shall reveal how much of this picture is politically influenced.

 

Data Source: Election commission of India's Lok Sabha election report 2014