Hindustan Times

Abhishek Jha

In the early years, voter turnout was much lower than it is today, the Congress’s political dominance was much greater than anything seen since. See the story in four charts.

An age of Congress dominance

<p>The 2024 general election will be the 18th Lok Sabha election in India. While it remains to be seen whether the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) wins a majority for the third consecutive time, it is almost a given that voter turnout will be more than 50% in these elections.</p><p>Things were very different when independent India began holding elections. While voter turnout was much lower than it is today, the Congress’s political dominance was much greater than what the BJP enjoys today. Here are four charts that explain this in detail.</p><h2 style="text-align:center;">A gradual rise in voter participation</h2><p>Only 45.7% of the 173 million registered electors turned up to vote in India’s first ever Lok Sabha election. This may seem like a low figure by today’s standards, but was a significant achievement for a country where the literacy rate was only 18%, and most people had likely never voted before. It also remains the lowest ever voter turnout in the history of Lok Sabha elections.</p><p>The turnout improved slightly, to 46.3%, in the second Lok Sabha election, in 1957. These elections were the last time voter turnout in India was under 50%. The voter turnout in 1962 increased to 55%, a level indicative of where it would remain for most of India’s history. It is only in the latest two elections that there has been a significant upward bump in voter turnout, which now stands at about two-thirds of registered voters.</p>

<h2 style="text-align:center;">An era of unmatched dominance</h2><p>With Jawaharlal Nehru still alive, the first three Lok Sabha elections were the most successful period for the Congress at the national level. While the party polled its highest-ever vote share and seat share in the 1984-85 election, held in the aftermath of Indira Gandhi’s assassination, that was an isolated instance. With the exception of 1984-85, the 1951-1962 period is the only one in which just one party has won more than 70% of all Lok Sabha seats.</p>

<h2 style="text-align:center;">Struggles of the opposition</h2><p>To be sure, the 1951-52 and 1957 elections had multi-seat constituencies that were done away with subsequently. Is it the case that the Congress seat share is statistically exaggerated by a different format of election?</p><p>It is safe to assume that this is not the case because the Congress won almost the same seat share in 1962, after multi-seat constituencies had been done away with. Part of the party’s high seat share can be attributed to anti-Congress votes being spread too thin. This may not be intuitive — the Congress vote share in these elections is also the highest by a single party — but can be seen through the ratio of seat share and vote share. A larger value of this number for a party indicates that it has distributed its overall vote share efficiently across seats (and its opponents have not) in order to win in a first-past-the-post system.</p><p>The seat share-to-vote share ratio for the Congress in these three elections is among the top five achieved by single-largest parties across years. The Congress did not have this advantage in 1967. Its seat share dropped by 19 percentage points, with just a four-percentage point decline in vote share.</p>

<p>Another indicator shows that a powerful opposition at the national level was yet to develop at this time. The seat share of the party finishing second is ranked the lowest, third-lowest, and fifth-lowest in the first three Lok Sabha elections. These are also three of the four elections when the party finishing second won just about 5% of seats, the other two being the 1971 and 1984-85 elections. To be sure, independent candidates won about 8% of seats in the first two Lok Sabha elections, the two highest seat shares for such candidates across years. However, this is only further proof of the fact that no single party had consolidated anti-Congress votes in this era.</p>

<p>How did the BJP perform during this time? Only its predecessor, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, existed at this time. The Jana Sangh trailed behind other opposition parties such as the Communist Party of India (CPI) and the parties led by Jayaprakash Narayan and JB Kripalani. However, it inched closer to the top in the opposition ranks by 1962, winning 14 seats and finishing third after the CPI and the Swatantra Party.</p>