what is the difference between India and USA popular participation in elections.
Answers
Answer:
have a look on this explanation and make your own answer
Explanation:
USA is a perfect federal democracy meaning states are extremely powerful and are independent to take decisions in lots of areas whereas India is quasi-federation where centre in too strong. Second, US has a presidential form of government whereas India has a parliamentary form of government.
Coming to elections, US has 50 states and each state has some votes to elect president assigned to them like California has 55 and Texas has 37. Overall there are 538 votes. Whoever gets 270, wins. If you get more votes from public in a state all the presidential votes of that state go to you. So suppose Donald Trump wins 50.01% votes in Texas and Hillary Clinton wins 49.99%, all the 37 votes of Texas will go to Trump. Now this is true for almost all states except Nebraska and Maine. So focus of candidates is winning states. So if Donald trump knows that he is going to get 30% votes in New York and Hillary 70%, he will not campaign there because no matter how much he tries, even if he gets to 40% all 29 votes of new york will go to Hillary. So he won’t campaign there. In US, lots of states are like this only where one knows beforehand which party is very strong. These are called Red or Blue states. Texas is deep red state and you will not see any Democrat candidate nor Republicans campaigning there. Similarly California and New york are deep blue states and Republicans and Democrats do not campaign there. States where both sides see chance becomes the centre of election like Ohio, Florida etc. Both Candidates will concentrate their resources on winning these states. These are called Swing states. Now suppose Hillary wins 99% votes in all the states she wins and Trump only wins 50.01% in the states he won. Still if trump wins those states which add upto 270 and Hillary gets 268 still Trump will be president. Something similar happened in 2016 elections. Even though Hillary got more overall votes from public, Trump was elected president.
India is a parliamentary republic. Our entire country is divided into 543 constituencies. So here basic unit is a constituency. So even if BJP gets 5% votes in Bihar and Cong/RJD gets 95 %. BJP can win seats if all their 5% votes is concentrated in one constituency. In Indian Parliamentary elections, state are not blocks. The basic unit is a constituency. So you see our leaders campaigning everywhere. BJP even won a seat in Tamilnadu in 2014. In a US like polity, this would have been impossible.