Number Theory: The largest of the five-phase poll cycle

What is at stake in the election today?

All of Madhya Pradesh’s 230 and 70 of the 90 assembly constituencies (ACs) in Chhattisgarh will go to polls today (Friday, November 17). This makes it the largest of the five-phase polling cycle in the current round of state elections which involves a total of 679 ACs across five states. What is at stake in the election today? Here are four charts which explain this.

Representative image (HT_PRINT)

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  Congress turned the tables on BJP in these ACs in 2018 but could not translate that into Lok Sabha success

  In the 2018 elections, 165 out of these 300 ACs were won by the Congress. The state-wise breakup of this number was 114 in Madhya Pradesh and 51 in Chhattisgarh. For the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) this number was 109 and 13 in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. This was a sharp reversal from the 2013 results when the BJP won 206 out of these 300 ACs (165 in Madhya Pradesh and 41 in Chhattisgarh) while the Congress managed to win just 85 (58 in Madhya Pradesh and 27 in Chhattisgarh). While the BJP went on to consolidate its 2013 victory in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the Congress failed miserably in capitalizing on its 2018 victory in the 2019 elections. See Chart 1: 2013-18 and 2014-18 Congress-BJP AC-wise seat share in MP and Chhattisgarh

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  History suggests that Chhattisgarh elections have been more competitive than Madhya Pradesh

  If one were to look at election results since 2003 – they are first when Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh went to polls as separate states – the BJP seems to have the edge in Madhya Pradesh. The BJP’s seat share difference with the Congress was 58.7, 31.3 and 46.5 percentage points in 2003, 2008 and 2013, which is much more than the 14.4, 13.3 and 11.1 percentage point gap between the two parties in Chhattisgarh. The Congress recorded Chhattisgarh’s biggest-ever election victory in 2018. In Madhya Pradesh, however, while the Congress had a 2.2 percentage point seat share advantage vis-à-vis the BJP in 2018, it had a marginally lower vote share than the BJP. See Chart 2: MP and Chhattisgarh seat share and vote share for Congress-BJP since 2013
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  In fact, the Congress has never won 32.6 % of Madhya Pradesh’s ACs since 2008

  An HT analysis of Madhya Pradesh results since the 2008 elections shows that of the 230 ACs in the state, the Congress has not been able to register a victory in 75 ACs. On the other hand, there are just 11 ACs where the BJP has never been able to win. This analysis cannot include elections before 2008 because the delimitation process in 2008 changed constituency boundaries rendering them non-comparable with the previous ACs. There are 10 and 58 ACs which have been won by the Congress and BJP in all three elections since 2008 in the state. See Chart 3: Gen-SC-ST ACs with record of Congress-BJP performance in 2008, 2013 and 2018
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  Bhopal-Naramadapuram and Vindhya subregions are the BJP’s biggest pockets of strength in Madhya Pradesh

  Madhya Pradesh can broadly be classified into six sub-regions: Bhopal-Narmadapuram, Bundelkhand, Gwalior-Chambal, Mahakoshal, Malwa-Nimar, and Vindhya. Malwa-Nimar is the biggest sub-region with 71 ACs. A subregion-wise analysis of seat share for the past three elections reveals that the BJP is very strong in Bhopal-Narmadapuram (31 ACs) and Vindhya (30 ACs). Even in the 2018 elections, the BJP seat share in these two regions was 67.7 per cent and 80 per cent respectively. Apart from these two regions, it is only in Bundelkhand (29 ACs) that the BJP continued to win a majority of ACs even in 2018. Chart 4: Region-wise Seat Share of BJP in 2008,2013, and 2018 in Madhya Pradesh
• Chhattisgarh, on the other hand, has very few party-dominated ACs

  Compared to Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh has very few party-dominated ACs in the current phase of the elections. There are 10 ACs where BJP has never won after 2003 while Congress has only six such ACs in their account. BJP has 5 ACs which it won continuously thrice while Congress has 6 such ACs. To be sure, the Congress has significantly improved its seat share in each sub-region of the state including in the BJP’s traditional stronghold of the Chhattisgarh plains.