JD(U) banks on women voters again; Chirag Paswan eyes repeat of 2024 gains

Bihar Elections 2025

As Bihar heads into another election cycle, women voters are set to play a key role, and Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United) is turning to its old playbook to win them over.

A Moneycontrol analysis shows that across the state, the female share of the electorate has edged up again, rising from 47.2 percent in 2019 to 47.7 percent in 2024. Historically, JD(U) has tended to perform better in constituencies where women’s participation is higher, a trend that has held across three electoral cycles.

In the 2019 general election, nearly two-thirds (65 percent) of JD(U)’s assembly-segment leads came from constituencies where women’s share of voters exceeded the local average.

In 2020, even as its overall strike rate fell, women-heavy seats still made up 56 percent of its wins, a ratio that held steady in 2024, when 40 of JD(U)’s 72 assembly-segment leads (56 percent) were in constituencies with higher female representation.

Crucially, JD(U)’s vote share in these women-heavy wins has strengthened alongside the rise in female turnout. In 2020, the party polled 41.8 percent in such seats, compared with 40.3 percent across all its wins. By 2024, the figures had nearly converged—49.4 percent in women-heavy seats versus 49.7 percent overall.

BJP’s Map Looks Different

The BJP’s pattern diverges sharply. In 2024, only about 39 percent of its leads came from women-heavy seats, and its vote share there (51.8 percent) trailed its overall average (53.5 percent). Over the last three cycles, the BJP’s vote share in women-dominant seats has averaged 51.8 percent, compared with 52.6 percent across all its victories.

The Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) sits somewhere in between: in 2024, half of its victories were in women-heavy constituencies, with vote shares broadly in line with its overall average.

Paswan’s New Women Voter Push

Interestingly, Chirag Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) and Tejashwi Yadav’s RJD were the only two parties that saw higher vote shares in women-led seats than in their overall leads in the 2024 general election.

For Paswan, conversion remained low—winning 10 of 30 women-heavy assembly segments (33 percent)—but his vote share in these seats (52.1 percent) exceeded his overall average of 51.8 percent.

RJD showed a similar pattern: though its strike rate was 50 percent, its vote share in women-heavy seats (49.2 percent) was higher than 48.7 percent overall.

Why the Gender Gap Matters

Seat-by-seat trends reinforce JD(U)’s strategic advantage. Many constituencies saw female shares rise 0.5–1.5 percentage points since 2020, especially in districts that overlap with JD(U)’s traditional strongholds—where its 2024 vote share hovered in the high 40s to low 50s.

For Bihar’s parties, the message is clear: in a state where women now form nearly half the electorate, electoral success hinges increasingly on how well each party courts their vote.