Number Theory: The stakes in Telangana contest

.

All 17 parliamentary constituencies (PCs) in Telangana, which is also the youngest state in the country, will vote on May 13. Will the Congress be able to replicate its 2023 assembly elections victory in the Lok Sabha elections? What are the political stakes for other political parties in the state? Here are four charts that attempt to answer this question.

Rahul Gandhi and Telangana chief minister Revanth Reddy during an election campaign meeting on the outskirts of Hyderabad on April 6 (AFP FILE PHOTO)

The stakes in the Telangana contest

• 
  Did the 2018 assembly elections results in Telangana reflect in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections?

  Telangana, like Andhra Pradesh, was scheduled to have simultaneous polls with the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. However, the then chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao from the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) – it has been renamed the Bharat Rashtra Samiti (BRS) – advanced the elections to hold them in end of 2018. The TRS swept the polls with a vote share and seat share of 46.9% and 74% respectively. In the Lok Sabha elections, held in 2019, the TRS’s vote share and seat share were 41.3% and 52.9%. The Congress, got a vote share and seat share of 28.4% and 16% in 2018, and 29.5% and 17.6% in 2019. The BJP, which had a vote share of 7% in 2018 and a seat share of just 0.8%, went on to garner a vote share and seat share of 19.5% and 23.5% in the 2019 parliamentary polls.
• 
  But the results changed across ACs between 2018 and 2019

  Out of the 119 assembly constituency (AC) segments in Telangana, 52 changed hands between the 2018 assembly elections and the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The TRS was able to forge ahead in 54 of the 88 ACs it won in 2018. However, apart from the TRS, neither of the other two major parties in the fray were able to retain support in 2019 in most ACs that they won in 2018. Out of the 21 AC segments that the Congress finished ahead in 2019, only six came from the 19 ACs it won in 2018. The BJP led in 21 ACs in 2019 though it had only won a single seat in 2018. The rest of the ACs where the BJP got a lead were won by the BRS in 2018.
• 
  Is Telangana a triangular contest between Congress, BRS and BJP?

  The fact that the three parties, TRS, BJP and Congress, managed to win 9, 4 and 3 parliamentary constituencies (PCs) respectively in 2019 would suggest that it is. However, an analysis of 2019 vote shares of the three parties suggests that a large number of PCs in the state do not have three equally strong contenders fighting against each other. This becomes clear if one looks at PC-wise ENOP in all 17 PCs in Telangana for 2019. ENOP is the reciprocal of the sum of squares of vote share of candidates in a constituency and a higher number suggests that more candidates are in the fray. The ENOP was 3 or higher in only four PCs, which means that the contest was completely triangular in only four PCs. The median ENOP in the election was 2.86, which means that the contest was still some distance from being triangular in half the PCs.
• 
  At whose cost did the Congress win Telangana in 2023?

  Congress won 64 out of the 119 ACs in Telangana Assembly polls in 2023. Bringing its seat share of 16% and vote share of 28.4% in 2018 to 53.8% and 39.4% in 2023 respectively. Data shows that this came mainly at the cost of the TRS. Out of the 64 ACs Congress secured, the TRS had won 47 (73.4%) of them in 2018. Moreover, in 61 of the 64 constituencies, the battle was directly between the Congress and the TRS, with the latter coming in as runner-up. If the trend of 2018 assembly results reflecting in 2019 holds between 2023 and 2024, the Congress could make gains at the cost of the TRS again.
• But it would be a mistake to extrapolate the BJP’s prospects by its 2023 performance

  As has been shown above, the BJP’s 2019 performance was much better than how it fared in the 2018 assembly elections. In 59 out of 118 ACs the BJP contested, its vote share increased by at least 10 percentage points between the 2018 and 2019 elections. If the BJP manages to replicate its Lok Sabha elections improvement, it could once again bounce back from its poor showing in the 2023 assembly elections.