All 224 assembly constituencies (ACs) in Karnataka will vote in a single-phase election to the state legislative assembly on May 10. While the exit polls after the end of voting will give their predictions on the results, the question is perhaps best left to be answered on May 13, which is when counting of votes will happen. This caveat notwithstanding, here are four charts which show Karnataka has voted in the recent past.
Polling officials with their EVMs, VVPATs and other polling materials prior to leaving for the polling booths on the eve of the Karnataka Assembly elections. (CEO, Karnataka Twitter)
A tripartite contest at the state level…
Since the Janata Dal (Secular) or JD(S) fought its first elections in 1999, winning a simple majority in the state has not been easy. Only the Congress has won a majority of ACs, in 1999 and 2013, and in both elections, it had an extraordinary advantage against its opponents. While 1999 were the first assembly elections for the JD(S), the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was facing a big rebellion in its ranks with leaders such as BS Yediyurappa and B S Sriramulu walking out of the party in 2013. Similarly, the BJP has emerged as the single largest party three times in assembly elections in Karnataka (in 2004, 2008, and 2018), but never won a majority on its own. This clearly shows that the third major party, the JD(S), is a formidable one in its own way. The JD(S)’s own performance in terms of ACs won has ranged from 4.5% in its first election in 1999 to a high of 25.9% in 2004. This is more than enough to play kingmaker in the state.
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…without too many triangular contests at the AC-level
This is what makes the state of play in Karnataka very interesting. Most AC-level contests in the state are anything but three-cornered, as the JD(S) enjoys a limited (but formidable) geographic support base in the southern part of the state.
An analysis of Effective Number of Participants (ENOP) – it is the reciprocal of the sum of squares of vote shares in a constituency and a higher value denotes a more fragmented contest – shows this clearly. The median or middle value of ENOP has been above three only twice in Karnataka elections: in 1994 and 2008. In the last assembly election in 2018, it was the lowest since the 1989 election. This means that outcome at the state level is not a reflection of how multipolar the election is at the AC-level.
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The major contest will still be between the Congress and the BJP
An analysis of AC-wise contests from 1999 onwards – it was the JD(S)’s first election – shows that the Congress has finished first or second in 185-197 out of the 224 ACs in the state. AC boundaries are not comparable before and after 2008 because of delimitation. In these ACs, the BJP was 1.3 to 3.1 times more likely than the JD(S) to finish first or second, which means that the two national parties are still the major competitors in the state.
But BJP breaking new ground in southern Karnataka could change things
One reason why AC-wise contests in Karnataka are not triangular in nature is the absence of the BJP from the traditional stronghold of the JD(S) in southern parts of the state. This can be seen by checking who finished first and second where JD(S) finished second and first. This shows that Congress is three to six times more likely than the BJP to finish first and second in ACs where JD(S) finished second and first. However, the BJP surprised both the JD(S) and the Congress by doing very well in these regions in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. While an advantage in national elections compared to state polls is now an established pattern for the BJP, a replication of this pattern could change the tripartite but not triangular nature of electoral competition for the state.
Abhishek Jha is Assistant Editor-Data at Hindustan Times. He uses statistical programming to generate newsworthy insights from large datasets. He is part of the team that produces Number Theory, a daily data story feature of the paper’s print edition. Since March 2024, he has been writing Weather Bee, a weekly column for the Hindustan Times website. He is a chemical engineer by training, who specialises in stories related to weather, climate, and the environment.
Jha has been at HT since 2018, where he offers data-driven perspective and analysis on politics, environment, weather, climate, economy and society. His work includes data coverage of elections in India and abroad, including the 2019 and 2024 Lok Sabha elections; the disasters and extreme weather resulting from changing climate, such as floods, droughts, heat waves, cold waves, and dwindling snow cap in the Himalayas; the factors that drive poor air quality in northern India; the changing patterns of land use; the Covid-19 pandemic and its impact on labour market conditions; the changing pattern of consumer spending seen in the new consumer spending surveys; and social norms seen in the surveys such as the National Family Health Survey.Read More
Roshan Kishore is the Data and Political Economy Editor at Hindustan Times. He heads the newsroom's data journalism team, which produces Number Theory, a daily data-driven feature for the print edition and the HT app. Number Theory uses data analysis and story-telling based on it to add value to the newsroom’s daily coverage by putting stories in a larger context on a range of issues, including politics, macroeconomy, markets, global affairs and climate. Under his leadership HT’s data journalism work has established itself as a niche product in Indian journalism and pushed the boundaries of marrying academic rigour with news sense and speed. Along with writing and editing data stories, he has also been writing a weekly political economy column called Terms of Trade for HT Premium.
A trained economist with an MPhil degree from Jawaharlal Nehru University, Kishore has also been a visiting fellow at the Centre for Advanced Studies of India (CASI) at the University of Pennsylvania. Along with his journalistic work, his writings have also appeared in journals such as the Economic and Political Weekly and working papers for CASI and UNESCAP.Read More
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