Elections across world display universal trend: Voter turnout drives victory margins
Study of Professor MS Santhanam’s research group from IISER Pune states statistical distribution of election’s margin of victory can be predicted solely from voter turnout
PUNE: In a paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters, professor M S Santhanam’s research group from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Pune reported a universal trend in elections across the world including in India – that the statistical distribution of an election’s margin of victory can be predicted solely from the voter turnouts, regardless of the electorate size (from municipal to state-level and parliamentary elections), country, region, or finer details on how the elections were conducted.
On the face of it, elections across the globe are a volatile mix of emotions, competing ideologies, and sometimes even violence. But the curiosity to find out whether or not beneath all this chaos and cacophony, there are some universal characteristics that elections share irrespective of where and when they are held; led professor Santhanam to analyse election data along with PhD students Ritam Pal and Aanjaneya Kumar. Election data drawn from 34 countries across six continents spanning several decades of national elections was analysed and a ‘Random Voting Model’ was developed governing how voters choose candidates.
Pal, one of the authors of the paper, said, “While complex interactions at different levels make the outcomes of elections inherently unpredictable, at the microscopic level, the rules for how people vote for a candidate are often simple as far as margin distributions are concerned. Our model leverages this simplicity to predict the statistical distribution of margins with remarkable accuracy.”
Upon analysing a total 581 elections conducted previously in the said 34 countries across six continents, the team found that the predictions derived from their model completely matched with the actual election results in each of the corresponding countries. Upon applying the analysis to election data from Indian elections (1952 to 2019), the team found that the victory margin distributions were in complete agreement with the expected universal trend observed for elections in other countries. The team also uncovered cases that flew in the face of the universal trend such as elections in Ethiopia and Belarus (in the last decade). Interestingly, these elections had been previously flagged by reputed international media outlets and civil organisations as potentially fraudulent. The authors surmised that this analysis can be valuable for identifying possible instances of electoral malpractices around the world.
Professor Santhanam said, “These findings offer an intriguing glimpse into how voter turnout shapes elections everywhere, and how science might help protect the integrity of elections.”
The research was supported by a MATRICS grant from the Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB); and Department of Science and Technology, Government of India; during the early stages of the work. The analysis was carried out at the National Supercomputing Mission’s PARAM Brahma supercomputer facility at IISER Pune.
