India's urban constituencies revisited.

This article examines patterns of voter turnout and electoral competition in India's urban parliamentary constituencies. It places the 2014 Lok Sabha elections in historical context, drawing on constituency-level data from national elections since 1977 to explore broad changes and continuities in electoral competition, party structures, and voter turnout, with particular focus on comparisons between urban and rural India. The purpose of the article is descriptive, seeking to fill a gap in the literature on electoral competition in urban India. I find evidence that India's urban constituencies have recently, on average, been less competitive and participatory than non-urban constituencies, though this has not been a consistent trend since the mid-1970s. This article concludes with a brief outline for a research agenda on electoral politics in urban India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]