The constituency-level electoral data of 10 parliamentary elections in India, from 1980 to 2014, is used to explore the factors that determine the outcome of parliamentary elections in India. The authors have employed logistic regressions to estimate a vote function with political variables, such as incumbency, political alignment, and political party affiliation, as determinants. That incumbency reduces the chances of winning in close elections, and/or that incumbency disadvantage has been strong in the Hindi belt since the elections of 1998, especially in the states with lower real per capita income, higher share of rural population and low literacy rates are among the various interesting findings that emerge.
