Skip to main content
Source
The Times of India
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/assembly-elections-2013/rajasthan-assembly-elections/majority-of-electors-do-not-vote-for-winner-study/articleshow/25460710.cms
Date
City
Jaipur

JAIPUR: A winning candidate, after all, may not take it all. In other words, it is not the majority votes that make a candidate win the polls.

An analysis by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and National Election Watchregarding the vote share and representativeness of the MLAs who got elected in the 2008 assembly elections in Rajasthan has brought to the fore that that 98% of the winners won with votes less than 40% of the registered voters.

The analysis defines the representativeness of a candidate as the share of votes polled by the winner compared to the total number of registered votes while the vote share of a candidate has been defined as the votes polled by the winner to the total number of valid votes polled.

According to the analysis, Loktantrik Samajwadi Party's Ramswaroop Ksana who won from Kotputli constituency and BJP's Anita Singh from the Nagar constituency won with the lowest percentage of votes of the total electorate. Both of them secured just 14 % votes of the total registered voters. On the other hand Anjana Udailal from Nimbahera constituency won with the highest percentage of votes out of the total electorate during the 2008 assembly polls at 48%.

On the vote share of winning candidates, the analysis says that 161 winners (80.5%) out of 200, won with less than 50% of the votes polled. Ramswaroop Ksana from Kotputli constituency and Anita Singh from Nagar constituency again won with the lowest vote share of 21%. In the state, Congress' Mahendrajeet Singh from Bagidora constituency won with the highest vote share of 63%.

The analysis makes a special mention of chief minister Ashok Gehlot who won with 55% vote share and 31% representativeness from Sardarpura constituency.

The party wise analysis shows that 77% of winners from Congress and 79% of winners from BJPhave less than 50% of vote share while 96 % of Congress winners and all BJP winners have less than 40% representativeness. Out of more than 3.62 crore registered voters in Rajasthan, 2.40 crore voters i.e., 67% voters turned up for voting during the 2008 polls.