The Data and the Truth about West Bengal Elections 2021

The West Bengal Elections was a story of 2 referendums. A referendum is a type of vote where you vote either for or against a decision. An example would be Brexit- Where the Brits voted one of the 2 options: “Stay” or “Leave”.

In India, general elections are definitely not designed to be referendums. However, to understand the West Bengal Election results better- you need to look at it from the perspective of referendums.

Think of it this way: there were 2 referendums at play. Voting for one- disqualified you from voting for the other. So a voter had to subconsciously choose one of the two & then decide to go for or against.

So, what were the referendums? It’s simple:

1. BJP (Yes/ No)
2. TMC (Yes/No)

So a BJP voter could be one of the two: BJP- Yes OR TMC- No. The same applies to TMC voters too. If you look at the vote-share, 86% of total votes went to BJP or TMC. Between them, they won 290 out of the 292 constituency seats. So it would be fair to say that only a small fraction of the voters, voted for a 3rd option. Of the 14% votes that went to all other parties, quite a bit would be a “BJP: No” or a “TMC: No”.

Understanding the Referendums:

Is it possible to understand the results of the individual referendums? Understanding, the same to help clear quite a few doubts about the future. Such as:

• How well settled is BJP in West Bengal?
• Is it the end of the road for Left and Congress?

I will take a stab at the same but unfortunately despite the generous usage of data, there are some assumptions I need to make. Whenever assumptions are at play: there is a scope of error.

My Methodology:

To understand the elections better, I put together the constituency level data for all parties. It wasn’t readily available & so I had to build a scraper and scrape the website of the Election Commission.

Data Source: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Yc-ZLdbuBwBSMcOULr8G7wvgKSzqGJP3BW8xRkj8Prc/edit?usp=sharing

To analyze the data I will consider the following parameters:

1. % votes by the winning candidate:

• Greater than 50%: Absolute Majority
• 40% -50% : Contested Majority
• <40%: Chance Majority

2. The Split Factor: Did the runner-up & 3rd placed candidate together win more share than the winner?

• Yes: Split
• No: No split

Firstly let’s take a look at the majority types:

In most seats, it was either an absolute majority or a contested majority.

Now let’s take a look at the split factor:

In 40% Seats, a vote split helped in determining the winner.

However, the real truth emerges when we layer the 2 factors together. That’s what tells us the story of the referendums. In the below tables I have tried to describe each of the scenarios:

There are 3 scenarios that explain the results of the Referendums

Analysis

1. Absolute Majority with No split:

Here the referendums resulted in a yes either for TMC or BJP. There were 129 such seats. TMC won 111 of them. BJP won 18 of them. It could be concluded, that in these seats the respective parties are well entrenched and only something drastic would change the equation.

In the case of BJP, not very surprisingly, 9 out of 18 seats are from North Bengal ( Alipurduar, Coochbehar & Darjeeling).

In the case of TMC, 51 out of the 111 seats are from Kolkata and adjoining districts of South & North 24 Parganas and Howrah.

For all practical purposes, these numbers could be considered as the respective worst cases for the 2 parties. It also is reflective of the fact, that while Kolkata and Adjacent areas are well within TMC’s control: BJP does have a worst-case number which is 6 times their wins in the 2016 elections.

2. Contested Majority but no split

We have 45 seats in this category. TMC won 31 of them and BJP won 14 of them. In the seats, the votes are polarized between both parties. These are seats that were the most unpredictable ones.

It’s also difficult to understand how the referendums panned out in these seats.

To get a better view, let’s look at 2016 performance in these 45 seats. In 2016, TMC won 33 of these 45 seats (two more than what they won in 2021). BJP didn’t win any of these seats in 2016.

Of the 33 seats that TMC won in 2016, they lost 6 to BJP in 2021. In 5 of these they had a winning margin of higher than 5%. This time, the losing margin ranges from 4% to 12%. We can thus say, that in these seats the primary mandate was: No TMC

The same can be said about 8 more seats, which belonged to the Left or Congress in 2016 but were won by BJP in 2021.

Within the category, TMC won 4 seats from Left & Cong. In the case of these 4 seats, the mandate is clear: No BJP

Now comes the biggest chunk, the 27 seats which TMC won in both 2016 & 2021. In these seats, there was only one question: TMC (Yes/No). The fact that BJP has come a close second, shows that the rising anti-incumbency against TMC has consolidated in the form of BJP votes.

In short, this segment is what TMC should worry about the most. Except for 4 seats, the anti-incumbency against them is rising and BJP's ability to consolidate that should be a matter of concern.

3. Contested Majority with Split

There are 113 seats in this category. TMC won 68, BJP won 44 & 1 seat was won by RSMP (Popularly known as ISF).

Not all these seats were 2-way contests. In 5 seats the runner-up was CPIM, RSMP, INC & Independents.

These mandates basically, were “No BJP” or “No TMC” mandates. We thus see that substantial number of seats a 3rd party scored good number votes. In 52 of the 65 seats, in which TMC won & BJP came second- Left front played the role of vote splitting in favor of TMC. In the remaining 13 seats in was done by INC & RSMP. In these 65 seats, the voters were too keen to show BJP the door. It was not a mandate in favor of TMC, rather the winning mandate was “No BJP”

The same logic applies for the 42 seats, where BJP beat TMC. Left front played the role of the “3rd one” in 30 of the seats; INC in the remaining 12. The mandate was clearly “No TMC”.

A bit about anti-incumbency

On an aggregate basis, it may seem that anti-incumbency was only a TMC problem. However, BJP actually adopted a good part of it by poaching TMC candidates. In many, cases, the anti-incumbency isn’t against the party but the local face. TMC let go of quite a few such faces & BJP lapped them up.

Consider the case of Rajib Banerjee(Domjur), Baishali Dalmiya(Bally), and Rabindranath Bhattacharya(Singur): All 3 of them were sitting TMC candidates who defected to BJP. BJP contested them from the same constituencies. They lost. Rajib lost by a margin of 17% and Rabindranath Bhattacharya by a margin of 12.3%. In the case of Dalmiya, the margin was narrow (<5%): but from the same constituency the CPIM candidate Dipshita Dhar won 17.5% of the votes (i.e. lost due to the split)

So when BJP, signed up the TMC defectors, they kind of signed up the anti-incumbency too.

After the 2019 poll surprise, TMC did bring about quite a bit of changes. Reshuffling of leaders and letting go of a few, seems strategic in hindsight. They thus did improve a tad-bit on the anti-incumbency factor.

Now talking about Religion

BJP did start off with an ambition to consolidate the 70% Hindu votes in the state. However, that did not hold for too long. Bringing in the likes of Yogi Adityanath for campaigning didn’t help much. In fact, Adityanath’s references of anti-Romeo squads, etc when strongly against Bengali sensitivity.

They thus switched gears and started attacking TMC on corruption and nepotism. Both did not sting much. Especially, since many of TMC's faces of corruption were battling for BJP.

TMC on the other hand did an excellent job consolidating the Muslim votes. The scare of impending NRC & CAA was strong enough to get Muslims to vote for TMC unanimously. This election marked the end of INC’s Muslim vote bank in Maldah and Murshidabad. Even ISF (the new kid in the block): couldn’t dent much.

Insider Vs. Outsider

BJP’s campaigns which had an overdose of the central leadership made it easy for TMC to highlight that they were an outside force. Even the chant of “Jai Shri Ram” was branded as an outsider slogan. What was more disturbing was BJP's failure to zero down to a singular local face. The final candidate list left a lot of local workers disappointed. Especially since many of the faces were of people whom they were primed to hate.

Hopes for a 3rd Front

Looking at the data, I don’t believe that the hope for a 3rd alternative in Bengal is over. No doubt that it would be the journey would be severely uphill. The pre-poll alliance stitched between Left, INC & RSMP, came second in 13 seats. In 41 seats, they came third but bagged at least 15% of the votes.

If we look at left-front separately, they came runner up in 4 seats. In 23 seats, they came 3rd but bagged at least 15% of the votes.

If we look at these 27 seats, we do see a trend. On one hand,we have the veterans like Kanti Ganguly, Sujan Chakraborty, Md. Salim & Ashok Bhattacharya. On the other hand, we have names like Debdut Ghosh, Pratik Ur Rahman, Dipsita Dhar, Shatarup Ghosh, and Sayandeep Mitra. In other words, the young guns of the left, have shown promise!

In 2026, TMC will complete 15 years in the state. Anti-incumbency will definitely grow. Mamata Banerjee will be past 70 and there is no acceptable second-line leadership yet ( Abhishek Banerjee lacks support even within party).

BJP definitely will consolidate their position, however, the “no BJP” sentiment will thrive. Modi’s failures in handling the covid crisis, impending economic doom — makes BJPs stance weaker too.

In such a situation, there can be the rise of a third alternative. It has to happen in steps.