Bihar Phase 1: Voter Turnout analysis

The phase-1 turnout data has thrown up some interesting early trends, however it is too early to conclude anything out of these trends. We should wait for a couple of phases to conclude anything substantive and definitive. 

 Overall increase in Turnout was quite a disappointment given the intensity of the campaign and the hypothesis of returning farm and industrial labour . At the end for about 12 million voters, there were about 120K additional voters. Therefore, my estimate is that every constituency saw a 2600 increase in number of voters. The average gap between the two alliances in 2014 was 19110. I am not touching upon gender participation as we have little data available at the constituency level. However, my own understanding from survey data is that higher gender participation is favorable for the NDA. 

Chart 1: Increase in voter turnout (from 2014 election) by party contesting in that constituency

Seats contested by INC and HAM have witnessed the highest increase in Voter Turnout. Every single % increase in Voter turnout would imply 2.5K additional voters. So a rough estimate for Congress constituencies would be about 10K of additional voters assuming 147K voters in 2014. In case of JD(U), this would be between 1.5-2K. The average gap between winning and losing party in 2014 was 19K. 

Chart 2: Voter turnout by pairs of contestants

When you look at pairs of contestants, it is fairly clear that either the INC has been clearly pushing more of their voters to turn up on election day or that the BJP and LJP have specifically targetted INC seats as they probably see it as the weakest partner. 

Chart 3: Voter TO by seats classified as Strong by party (basis 2014 election)

I have classified a seat as Strong on the basis of the sum total of MGB partner or NDA partners as per their performance in the 2014 election. The trend is fairly clear, MGB Strong seats have seen a much higher jump than NDA strong seats. However, one must note that in the 2014 elections the average gap beween MGB and NDA in MGB strong seats was about 16%. The gap between the two alliances in NDA strong seats was about 8%. 

Overall Takeaway

While there are some interesting early trends, it is difficult to decipher its implications as of now. A combination of data points suggest that NDA has effected higher TO but those same data points also suggest that the increase was feeble at best and not decisive.  However, we could draw more definitive conclusions should we see these trends repeating over the next 2 phases. 

Caution

a. Lok Sabha election results donot necessarily correlate strongly with Assembly elections. 

b. Voter TO has been extrapolated from a combination of data available at 4PM and published district level TO data as ECI is yet to publish 5PM data at the constituency level