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The math behind India’s elections—Why proximity matters

It is one of the most consistent findings in electoral politics: voters are more likely to support candidates who come from their local area.

It is widely believed that voters are more likely to support candidates who come from their local area. Drawing on fine-grained data from India’s 2014 general election, this article suggests that local candidates win not simply because voters want them, but because they can mobilise people who would otherwise remain untouched by the broader party machinery.

It is one of the most consistent findings in electoral politics: voters are more likely to support candidates who come from their local area (Gorecki et al. 2022). Politicians therefore often go to great lengths to present themselves as local. For example, the Shiv Sena candidate for Borivali constituency in Mumbai for the 2024 general elections described himself as a ‘bhoomi putra´ and stressed that he would continue to live among voters and remain accessible to them. Similarly, the BJP’s (Bharatiya Janata Party) Lok Sabha candidate for the Amritsar constituency for the 2024 general elections, Taranjit Singh Sandhu, was actively trying to project himself as the ‘son of the soil’ to counter the perception that he was an outsider, shaped in part by his long foreign service career. Clearly, being seen as local is viewed as an electoral advantage or at the very least used to avoid the disadvantage of being perceived as an outsider.

However, what it means to be local can take different forms. Indian parliamentary constituencies are geographically large and socially diverse, often encompassing several towns, villages, and neighbourhoods. They are also constructed by grouping together multiple assembly segments, and they can cut across administrative and social boundaries that people might otherwise use to define their sense of locality. For example, sharing the same zila may generate a sense of shared identity, even when the district is divided across multiple constituencies. A candidate may be perceived as local simply because they are recognised as a Mumbaikar, even if they do not come from the specific neighbourhoods that fall within the constituency. Similarly, in Gujarat, a candidate from Rajkot might be viewed as local not only in a narrow constituency sense but also through a broader Saurashtra regional identity that continues to structure political discourse in the state. Voters may therefore feel a sense of shared identity with candidates from their region or locality, or believe local candidates are more likely to represent their interests once elected, directing government spending and attention towards their community.

In a new study, we argue this picture is incomplete. Drawing on exceptionally fine-grained data from........

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