The triumph of Congress in Karnataka Election 2023 not only boosts the party's morale for the Lok Sabha elections next year, but also has broken a prevailing trend against landslide victories in the state, shows data.
The results show that Congress has won or is leading in 135 out of the 224 Assembly seats. This is for the first time since 1989, that a party has bagged a landslide victory in Karnataka, with its seat share crossing 60 percent.
Landslide victories, which lead to a single party or alliance dominating the political landscape, are not unusual in state assembly elections. In fact, five of the last 10 Assembly elections across India, other than this one in Karnataka, have thrown up such results.
However, in this southern state, such election results are a rare occurrence. Historical data reveal why.
There is no universally accepted definition for what constitutes a landslide victory in an election. But for the purpose of this analysis, we have considered a party winning more than 60 percent of the seats in an election as a landslide victory.
An analysis of historical election records sourced from the Trivedi Centre for Political Data at the Ashoka University shows that till this election, no single party or alliance had secured a landslide victory in Karnataka in the last 33 years. The last time a single party completely dominated an Assembly election in the state was 1989, when the Congress won 178 seats.
In fact, in the four elections that have taken place in the state in this millennium (not counting the latest one), only one — the 2013 election, in which the Congress party secured 122 seats — saw a party winning more than 50 percent of the seats.
The six regions of Karnataka
For political and electoral analysis, Karnataka can be divided into six regions: Mumbai Karnataka (Kittur Karnataka), Hyderabad Karnataka (Kalyana Karnataka), Central Karnataka, Coastal Karnataka, Old Mysuru and Bengaluru.
The difference in voting trends between these regions is one of the main factors behind political parties failing to secure huge victories in the state Assembly elections.
In the 2018 election, the BJP dominated in Mumbai Karnataka, Central Karnataka and Coastal Karnataka. Meanwhile, Bengaluru and Hyderabad Karnataka stood with the Congress, and the Old Mysuru region gave most seats to the JD(S).
The Karnataka Election Results 2023 shows that Congress has dominated in all regions except Coastal Karnataka, which has traditionally been a bastion of the BJP. Considering that Coastal Karnataka is smaller than the other regions, not being able to dominate there need not necessarily prevent a party from getting itself a thumping victory in the state overall.
In fact, the Congress' win this time has similarities to the victory of the Janata Party in the 1985 Assembly election, in which it failed to dominate Coastal Karnataka, but still secured more than 62 percent of the seats in the State Assembly.
The last two times Karnataka saw all of its regions giving most seats to a single party was in 1989, and then in 2013. On both occasions, it was to the Congress.
The fact that 1989 was the last time a party secured a landslide victory, and that 2013 was the closest any party came close to the 60 percent mark till now in this millennium, clearly shows the relation between the region-wise split in voting trends and the lack of thumping victories in the state.
However, with the triumphant victory of Congress this time, it remains to be seen whether Karnataka has finally gotten rid of its aversion against landslide victories.
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