Number Theory: Can RJD win back its dominance in Bihar?

This is last of a two-part series which looks at RJD’s political predicament in Bihar. The first part explained the 2024 results in Bihar from RJD’s perspective

The first part of this series looked at the 2024 results to argue that ending up as the party with the highest vote share was of little benefit to the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) in terms of winning more seats in Bihar. This is because the RJD’s contested vote share was seventh lowest among the 11 parties which were a part of the NDA or INDIA alliance. What can the RJD do to address this challenge? Here are three charts

RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav. (Santosh Kumar/ HT Photo)

Can RJD win back its dominance in Bihar?

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  RJD has had a contested vote share problem for a long time in Bihar

  A historical analysis of contested vote shares from 1998 onwards shows this clearly. 1998 were the first elections in which the RJD contested after Lalu Prasad Yadav split the Janata Dal in Bihar. The Janata Dal (United), or JD(U), was formed out of a split in the Samta Party (which had walked out of what was Lalu Prasad-led Janata Dal in Bihar) and contested its first elections in 1999. The RJD has had the highest contested vote share in four out of the 13 Lok Sabha and assembly elections since 1998. These are the 2000 assembly elections, 2004 Lok Sabha elections, 2005 (February) assembly elections, and 2015 assembly elections. Three out of these four performances came in a period when the RJD was in power in Bihar as a dominant party. In 2015, the RJD contested along with the JD(U) and the Congress in the state and the alliance routed the BJP-led NDA winning 73.3% of the seats in the assembly.
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  And alliances alone will not help the RJD’s cause

  RJD has ceded a lot more space to its allies in the state in the recent past than it used to earlier. It contested less than 60% of the total seats in the last four Lok Sabha (2019 and 2024) and assembly (2015 and 2020) elections in the state. However, its strike rate has varied wildly from 0 to 79% in these elections. In fact, the share of seats contested by the RJD has almost no correlation with its strike rate in all assembly and Lok Sabha elections in the state since 1998. This shows that sharing more seats with its alliance partners alone is not going to lead to a revival of the RJD in the state’s politics.
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  RJD needs to work on regaining its 3broad-based support in Bihar

  A simple statistic can help explain this argument. While the FPTP system of democracy can lead to victories despite low vote shares, one would assume that a party winning a constituency with a 50% or greater vote share reflects a broad-based support for its politics. HT has looked at the number of all PCs and assembly constituencies (ACs) won with a 50% or bigger vote share by the three main parties in Bihar, namely RJD, BJP and JD(U), as a share of total seats contested by them. The BJP fought its first elections in 1984, the RJD in 1998 and the JD(U) in 1999. 6.5% and 4.8% of RJD’s all AC and PC victories came with a vote share of 50% or more. These numbers are 4.3% and 16.1% for the BJP, and 6.1% and 17.4% for the JD(U). If one were to divide these victories into pre- and post-2005 periods – the RJD lost power in the state that year – then the share of RJD victories with a vote share of 50% or more shows a sharp fall in the second period.
• What it means...

  The inability of the RJD to harvest bigger constituency-level victories in the post-2005 period is symptomatic of the erosion in its social base after the JD(U) found its mojo in the state’s politics. This theory finds further support when one looks at the fact that the RJD’s strike rate has been the highest in two elections – 2004 Lok Sabha and 2015 assembly. The RJD was in alliance with the Lok Janshakti Party in 2004 and the JD (U) in 2015, in addition to its traditional partners such as the Congress and Left Parties. Both the JD(U) and the LJP had leaders who were peers of Lalu Prasad Yadav from the days of the anti-Emergency struggle in Bihar. Can the RJD build/maintain another such alliance to rediscover its mojo in Bihar? The first prerequisite for such a project to sustain itself will be the willingness of the RJD to share leadership at the state level in letter and spirit rather than just a tactical arrangement to regain its old dominance in Bihar. This will only come with a realisation that it was the way it conducted itself in its dominant period which laid the ground for the RJD’s weakening in Bihar’s politics.