Polling in West Bengal will conclude today with the second phase of voting for 142 out of the state's 294 assembly constituencies (ACs). Will the Trinamool Congress (TMC) under Mamata Banerjee win a fourth consecutive assembly election or will the BJP stop the TMC juggernaut in the state? The answer will depend on whether the TMC manages to hold on to the part of the state going to polls today, where it has always fared well, including in
TMC has dominated in Phase 2 ACs in past three polls in the state
The first and second phase of the assembly election have had an almost equal number of constituencies voting. If one were to look at the performance of the TMC and the BJP in the past three elections in the state – 2019 Lok Sabha, 2021 assembly and 2024 Lok Sabha – then a clear pattern emerges between the ACs voting in the first and second phase. The BJP surged ahead of the TMC in the first phase ACs in the 2019 elections, the first time it established itself as the main opposition party in the state after marginalizing the Congress and the Left. While the BJP lost some of its edge in these ACs in the 2021 and 2024 elections, the TMC’s real electoral buffer comes from the ACs which are voting today. Its vote-share lead over the BJP in ACs voting in the second phase has been in double digits in the past two elections and was a formidable 8.3 percentage points even in 2019. This, in a first-past-the-post system, has translated into a massive seat share gap.
TMC’s dominance in Phase 2 ACs needs to seen with its origins as a South Bengal party
Mamata Banerjee walked out of the Congress in 1998 to form the TMC. As a politician from Kolkata, she managed to break a large part of the Congress in the South Bengal region which is mostly the parts voting in the second phase of these elections. Even when the TMC was nowhere near victory in the state in the 2001 and 2006 elections, it had a much larger vote share in the second phase ACs than in the ones which voted in first phase. This also means that the TMC organisation, as Mamata Banerjee built it, is more organically rooted in this part of the state. Will the TMC’s historical roots in South Bengal help it overcome a concerted challenge by the BJP once again? This is the most important question as far as the 2026 election is concerned.
It’ll take a widespread anti-TMC wave rather than localised reverses for the BJP to gain significant ground in this phase
If one were to break down the 2021 results for first and second phase ACs in West Bengal by victory margin, then a clear pattern emerges. Unlike ACs in the first phase, the TMC won an overwhelmingly large number of ACs (91) in the second phase with a margin of 10% or more of the total votes polled. In the first phase it only won 47 ACs with a comparable margin. This means that it will take a large attrition of voters from the TMC to the BJP to make a significant dent in the TMC’s second phase tally in the state.
Unless the BJP makes a sizeable dent in the TMC’s tally in these constituencies, it may struggle to approach the halfway mark in the assembly. For the TMC, the key question is whether it is facing headwinds linked to SIR and security-cordon concerns, or a broader erosion of support driven by anti-incumbency. Its South Bengal bastion may help it absorb the former, but could prove more vulnerable to the latter.
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