Assembly election results 2018: Big boost for TRS in seat, vote shares as Opposition alliance suffers

Opposition parties have been trying to forge an anti-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) coalition in the run-up to general elections in 2019.

Out of the five states which went to polls in this election cycle, Telangana was the only one which had an umbrella coalition of anti-BJP parties. In fact, the state saw a historic alliance between the Congress and the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), which have been traditional adversaries. The poll arithmetic justified the strategy.

Watch: Assembly elections results: How KCR swept Telangana

The combined vote share of the Congress, TDP, Communist Party of India (CPI) and the Telangana Jan Samithi (TJS) was 6.42 percentage points more than the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) vote share in the 2014 assembly elections for the 119 seats in Telangana. To be sure, the state went to polls as part of undivided Andhra Pradesh.

A perfect vote transfer between the constituents should have led to the defeat of the TRS. The actual outcome has been the opposite. The TRS has significantly increased its vote share and seat share, while the united opposition has suffered big losses. The combined vote share of the Congress, TDP, CPI, and TJS decreased from 40.46% to 32.69%. The TRS vote share increased from 34.04% to 46.86%.