lok-sabha-elections

Updated: May 24, 2019 10:11 IST

Bihar saw one of the largest multi-party coalitions of opposition parties against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic alliance in this election. Past elections in the state justified this strategy.

Ever since the division of the state in the year 2000 to create Jharkhand, the anti-BJP vote share in the state has hovered just below the two-thirds mark in both the Lok Sabha and state elections.

However, the seat share of parties opposed to the BJP has traditionally been low, except in 2004, when a similar coalition of major anti-NDA parties won 29 of 40 seats in the state.

The results in the 2019 election, however, are opposite to that of 2004 in Bihar.

The NDA was leading in 39 seats in the state at the time of writing this story, while the Congress was leading in one seat.

In 2014, the NDA won 31 seats, while the RJD-led alliance won seven. The Janata Dal (United), which left the NDA in 2014, won two seats. The JD(U) won 16 of 17 seats it contested this election.

The Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD)-led grand alliance in the 2019 election comprised parties whose combined vote share in the 2014 election was 32.8% compared to the NDA’s 38.8%. This has fallen to 30.7% in 2019.

On the other hand, with the JD(U), the combined vote share of the current NDA constituents, which also includes the Lok Jan Shakti Party (LJP), would have been 51.6% in 2014. This increased to 53.2% in the 2019. Hence, the anti-NDA vote share of 46.8% in 2019 is the lowest since 2004.

This is 15.7 percentage points less than the median anti-NDA vote share in the Lok Sabha and assembly elections in Bihar since 2004.