Declining political heft of JDU may have forced Nitish to switch alliance yet again

A combination of the JD(U) getting fewer seats to contest and winning even fewer seats in the recent assembly elections might have influenced Nitish Kumar to change alliances yet again.

Janata Dal (United) leader Nitish Kumar resigned as the Bihar Chief Minister on Tuesday. This came after his decision to switch alliances yet again. A combination of two factors may have weighed on his mind. His party, the JD(U), was getting fewer seats to contest as compared to a decade ago. At the same time, the party was winning even fewer seats, an analysis of the last five assembly election results shows.

Looking at the data on the number of seats in the last two assembly elections, the strike rate of JD(U) has declined. For instance, of the 141 seats the party had contested in the 2010 Bihar assembly elections, it won a massive 115 of them with an emphatic strike rate of nearly 82 per cent. The strike rate is the percentage of seats won over the contested seats. The party's vote share in seats it contested was 39 per cent.

That year was clearly a high point for the party. However, it contested with different allies in the two subsequent assembly elections, i.e. in 2015 with the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and in 2020 with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). On both occasions, there was a dip in the strike rate compared to 2010. Though it was marginal in 2015, it was steep in 2020.

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In the 2020 elections, for instance, the JD(U) contested in 115 constituencies, five more than the BJP, but could only come victorious in merely 43 of them as opposed to the BJP's tally of 74, as per the data from the election commission.

Contrast that with the consistently high strike rate of the BJP all through except in 2015. In the 2010 state elections, the BJP won nearly nine out of every ten seats the party contested. Ten years later, in 2020, it had a strike rate of 67 per cent.

Analysis of the last five election results shows the importance of the alliance in Bihar. Four out of five times, the BJP and the JD(U) contested as allies. The only exception was 2015. That year, the BJP could win just 53 of the 157 seats it contested. That year, the party's strike rate was the lowest in the last five elections.