Karnataka results decoded: How BJP won 26 more seats than Congress despite getting 1.8% less votes

The Karnataka results are out and while all sort of 'nataka' is now taking place regarding government formation, the fact that BJP won 26 more seats despite polling 6,38,621 votes less than Congress has left many confounded. Conventional wisdom suggests that the party which has got the most number of seats must have got more votes than its nearest rival.

But this wasn't the case here, and BJP despite having a clear seat advantage ended with 1.8% less votes than Congress. BJP got 36.2% votes, Congress 38% and JD(S) 18.3% votes. Infact BJP could have got a clear majority if not for Congress narrowly winning 8 seats with a margin of less than 2000. To borrow a term from US politics, Congress 'lost' the election, despite winning the popular vote, like it happened to Hillary Clinton in 2016, when she was defeated in electoral college by Trump despite getting more votes than him.

Interestingly, the same phenomenon also happened in 2008, when BJP got 110 seats to form Karnataka government despite getting 1.27% votes less than Congress. Now what explains this particular phenomenon in Karnataka, where repeatedly mandate of the people is not exactly the most 'popular' one.

Well blame the first-past-the-post system of Indian elections and a very typical voting pattern prevalent in Karnataka.

In Karnataka, there are six broad geographical regions. Congress has an almost similar degree of presence in all the regions, whereas BJP is virtually absent in Old Mysore region which is South Karnataka. BJP only has pockets of influence there and in rest of the seats it is a straight-up fight between JD(S) and Congress. Thus BJP has a skewed vote percentage over the regions thus giving it windfall number of seats in Mumbai Karnataka and Coastal Karnatakla and virtually getting wiped out in South Karnataka. Out of 222 seats in contention, BJP were in play in around 180 of them and ended up winning 104.  Congress was an interested player in all seats, but ended up with a vastly lower strike rate. 

Here's how the regions voted :

Those who wish to understand how Congress vote share in Karnataka is looking more than the BJP; here are the critical details. Look at the huge BJP leads in "Rest of Karnataka" outside the Mysore region and you will get the clue. Congress trails by 5% in "Rest of Karnataka". pic.twitter.com/XLVRMjV45L

— Yashwant Deshmukh (@YRDeshmukh) May 15, 2018

As you can, BJP is ahead of Congress by 7% in Central Karnataka, by a massive 12% in Coastal Karnataka, and by 5% in Mumbai-Karnataka. Both parties had same percentage of votes in Bangalore and Congress was up 4% in Hyderabad Karnataka. But it is in Southern Karnataka, winning 51 seats where Congress had a huge lead of 16% over BJP. This explains the conundrum of Congress ending up with more votes than BJP. The seat differential is also startling, mirroring the vote share of all the parties across different regions.

Now,what explains BJP's complete rout in many seats in Southern Karnataka? While it has a lot to do with party's weak organisation there, many believe BJP also put out weak candidates in many places to facilitate JD(S). A prime example is Chamundeshwari from where outgoing Siddaramaiah was contesting.

BJP gave a weak candidate there, facilitating path of JD(S) candidate to rout the incumbent CM. In a first-past-the-post system, a candidate just needs to get 1 more vote than its nearest opposition to win the election and whatever votes other get, doesn't matter in the final equation. BJP with its huge war chest of resources used it intelligently and allocated them optimally for best possible results. Thus PM Modi didn't campaign in Old Mysore. The party played to its strength and very nearly pulled off a coup, ending a few seats short of the half-way mark. BJP's less-than-impressive performance in Bengaluru finally did them in.

This first-past-the-post system is the reason why BSP got zero seats in 2014 Lok Sabha elections despite getting third highest percentage of votes nationally at 4.1%. They also got nearly  20% in Uttar Pradesh, but didn't win a single seat. TMC on the other hand got 34 Lok Sabha seats by polling 3.8% of the votes nationally. End of the day, it is not enough to pull votes uniformly. you have to emerge victorious for your voice to be heard in the corridor of political power.