Data Suggests Naveen Babu is a Victim of First Past The Post

By: Sutanu Guru

The assembly election results of Odisha in 2024 demonstrate the relentless rise of the BJP as a potent national force. Till the 1990s, the party was an insignificant and marginal player in Odisha. But it forged an alliance with a newly formed BJD helmed by Naveen Patnaik in late 1997. The two contested as allies in 2000 and 2004.

In the previous story by the author, electoral data was analysed to show how the first past the post system can sometimes play havoc with electoral outcomes. For instance, the BJP obtained a more than 26% vote share and yet won just 9 out of the 28 seats it contested. The Congress, in contrast, obtained a 17% vote share but managed to win 13 of the 17 seats it contested.

Something similar has happened in Odisha. Many readers following the 2024 elections would know how the BJP has won the state of Odisha for the first time since elections were held in 1952. One of the most popular chief ministers ever, Naveen Patnaik finally lost an election marking the end of an era. For the record, Naveen Patnaik had first taken oath as the chief minister of Odisha in March 2000 and had led his party BJD to victories in successive assembly elections in 2004, 2009, 2014 and 2019. Along the way, he broke the record held by the late Jyoti Basu of West Bengal of being the longest serving chief minister of a major state. Thanks to this defeat, the 77-year-old Naveen Babu will not be able to beat the record held by Pawan Chamling of Sikkim.

Besides being the swan song of Naveen Babu, the results of the 2024 elections demonstrate two other significant trends in Indian politics. The first is the long-term strategic thinking and tenacity of the BJP as a party. The second is the almost terminal decline of the Congress as a political force in many large states of India. But first look at how seemingly small vote share changes can lead to massive changes in the number of seats won. In the 2024 elections, the BJD vote share is 40.22%.

That is marginally higher than the 40.07% obtained by the BJP. Yet, in an assembly of 147 members, the Naveen Patnaik led BJD managed to win just 51 seats while the BJP won a clear majority with 78 seats. How can a party with a higher vote share lose an election would be natural question for students of political science to ask. The answers lie in vote share changes and the first past the post system. Compared to 2019, the BJD vote share declined by 4.5% while the BJP vote share jumped by 7.6%. This completely changed the direction and eventually the outcome of the election. In a subsequent piece, we will see how something similar happened with the BJP in Uttar Pradesh.

As mentioned above, the assembly election results of Odisha in 2024 also demonstrate the relentless rise of the BJP as a potent national force. Till the 1990s, the party was an insignificant and marginal player in Odisha. But it forged an alliance with a newly formed BJD helmed by Naveen Patnaik in late 1997. The two contested as allies in 2000 and 2004. As the accompanying chart indicates, the BJP was very much the junior partner in the alliance. Those who follow Indian politics would know that the BJP started as a junior partner even in states like Maharashtra, Bihar and Haryana where it is now the dominant force. Anyways, Naveen Patnaik broke the alliance with the BJP before the 2009 elections and won three handsome victories on his own after that. If you go by vote shares till 2014, it would appear that the BJP struggled to stay relevant in Odisha (It had an 18% vote share in 2014 when Narendra Modi became prime minister). That jumped to 32.5% in 2019 and crossed the 40% mark in 2024. In the noise related to the failure of the BJP to win a majority in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, this significant development has been largely ignored.

As has been the terminal decline of the Congress in the state. Data clearly suggests that the Congress had an opportunity since 2009 to revive and become the principal challenger to the BJD. But as in many other states, it unfortunately started withering away. At more than 29%, the Congress vote share was double that of the BJP. By 2024, it had crashed to less than one third of the vote share of the BJP. There is much talk about the resurgence of the Congress as a national force after the 2024 verdict. Yet data from states like Odisha indicate how difficult the challenge is for the Congress.