Bihar: Assembly and council elections
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This is a collection of articles archived for the excellence of their content. |
Contents |
Bihar poll toppers: 1951-2010
1951-2015: Caste composition of the Bihar Legislative Assembly
Bihar, Election trends, Assembly and Lok Sabha: 2005-2014
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2010: Bihar Assembly election
2010 elections: Victory margins
The Times of India, Oct 06 2015
Atul Thakur 48 seats saw win margins under 5k in 1010
Several close calls can add up to an electoral sweep
Even a contest that is largely bipolar and pro duces a decisive verdict in a state need not produce decisive mandates from seat to seat, as the 2010 polls in Bihar illustrate. An analysis of the 2010 results shows that the onesided verdict in which the JD(U)-BJP combine won 206 of the 243 seats against just 25 for the RJD-LJP alliance nevertheless saw a lot of close seat level contests.
In fact, the winning candidate got a majority of the votes polled in less than 10% of the seats. BJP won in 12 of these constituencies while JD (U) won 11. There were another 91 constituencies where the winning candidate polled between 40% and 50% of the valid votes.Of these, 47 seats went to the JD (U) while the BJP and RJD won in 32 and 11 such seats respectively .
It is interesting to note that in more than half the seats in a largely bipolar contest the winning candidate got less than 40% of the votes. Indeed, there were 29 constituencies where the winner got less than even 30% of the votes polled. Despite sweeping the elections, the winning candidates of the JD(U)-BJP alliance were more or less evenly distributed across all these ranges.
The closeness of the contests at the seat level is revealed also in the victory margins in the 2010 elections. There were 48 constituencies where the victory margin was less than 5,000 votes. The JD(U) won 17 of these seats, the RJD 12 and BJP 11.This clearly sugBATTL gests that even a marginal swing in BI the votes could have thrown up a significantly different outcome in terms of party tallies, though the overall re sult would not have changed.
The average margin was about 15,000 votes. In 145 seats, or about 60% of the total, the vic tory margin was less than this average of 15,000 votes. Interest ingly, in the 98 conEGROUND stituencies where HAR the margin was higher than the av erage the winning alliance was successful in all but one.
It is also instructive to note that despite the essentially bipolar nature of the contest, 35.4% of the votes polled did not go to either of the two major combines.The Congress won 8.4% and smaller parties and independents mopped up a sizeable 27%.
Clearly, therefore, what is bipolar at the state-wide level can become quite multi-cornered at the micro level. That explains why so much effort goes into micro managing the details.
2010-14
Women candidates and women voter in Bihar Assembly polls
