ABSTRACT
This chapter aims at understanding if place tends to favour one party at the expense of others, and if so, what explains preferential treatment of place in supporting one or the other party. It examines if place/locality or simply where one lives either by choice or otherwise can be an important predictor of how individuals vote even when their social locations are taken into account. The chapter presents voting preference of socio-economic groups in rural and urban areas. It appears that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) did get more votes in urban than rural areas. In a country with uneven development of opportunities and socio-economic characteristics, voting preference tends to vary. In India, the BJP has traditionally been getting more support in urban than rural areas. It has often been explained by compositional hypothesis, suggesting that politics in urban areas is largely shaped by higher castes and non-poor classes by virtue of their numerical superiority.
