ABSTRACT

Politicians winning elections with large margins of victory, beyond what is necessary to win electoral contests,what we term “winning big”, is a common, yet under-studied phenomenon across the world. Political economy models suggest that winning big is not an optimal allocation of scarce campaign resources in a SMP/FPTP electoral system. Inductive inquiry shows that incumbent politicians likely to win nevertheless campaign hard, often devoting considerable effort and resources, for reasons that remain unexamined. Focusing on India, this article explores a range of reasons that can help explain this phenomenon through an innovative research design that combines quantitative analysis with in-depth elite interviews with incumbent MPs from 10 states. We distinguish the phenomenon of “winning big” from that of “safe” seats,identify and probe factors that can contribute to large margins, including candidate strategy, party popularity, mobilizers, electoral uncertainty, and party control . Our findings suggest that while political parties in India, as elsewhere, do not spend more money on electoral contests that they likely to win comfortably, winning big can be the result, among other factors, of a party strategy to establish a reputation for invincibility, and/or individual efforts, stemming from a sense of political vulnerability felt by politicians, underestimated in the literature on safe seats.

摘要

Politicians winning elections with large margins of victory, beyond what is necessary to win electoral contests,what we term “winning big”, is a common, yet under-studied phenomenon across the world. 政治经济学模型表明，在 SMP/FPTP 选举系统中，大获全胜并不是稀缺竞选资源的最佳分配。归纳式调查表明，现任政客可能会努力赢得竞选，但往往会投入大量精力和资源，其原因尚待考证。本文以印度为重点，探讨了一系列有助于解释这一现象的原因，通过创新的研究设计将定量分析与对来自 10 个州的现任国会议员的深入精英访谈相结合。我们区分“赢大”和“安全”席的现象，识别和调查可能导致较大差距的因素，包括候选人策略、政党人气、动员者、选举不确定性和政党控制。我们的研究结果表明，虽然印度的政党和其他地方一样，不会在他们可能轻松获胜的选举比赛上花费更多的钱，但赢得大胜可能是政党建立无敌声誉的战略的结果，除其他因素外，和/或个人努力，源于政治家感受到的政治脆弱感，在安全座椅的文献中被低估了。