Times of India 
 
Bangalore/New Delhi, May 26: Congress may have finished a distant second to BJP in the Karnataka assembly elections, but it remains ahead of the saffron party in terms of vote share, though only just. An analysis of the detailed results available on the Election Commission’s website shows that Congress won 34.6% of the votes against BJP’s 33.9%.

While that represents a swing of about 0.7 percentage points away from Congress since the last assembly elections in 2004, it means BJP has picked up an additional 5.6% of votes compared with the 28.3% share it had four years back.

JD(S), which has got badly mauled with its tally dipping from 58 to 28, has not actually faced a huge negative swing in terms of vote share. Its share has dropped by less than two percentage points from 20.8% in 2004 to 19.1%.

What explains the major change in seat shares in that case? First, in a triangular contest, even minor vote swings can lead to major changes in seat tallies. Second, the JD(S) vote seems to have shrunk to specific pockets. Consequently, where it has triumphed, it has generally won by huge margins. This helped in boosting the vote share, but didn’t help win more seats.

The result was that despite a drop in its vote share, Congress won 80 seats — up from 65 last time — perhaps by replacing JD(S) as the rival to BJP in some constituencies where H D Deve Gowda’s party put up a decent showing last time.

Another major factor has been the disappearance of the "others", who won 7% of the votes and 13 seats last time. This time round, they have got a mere 1.5% of the votes and no seats to show for it.

The BJP’s nominee for prime minister, L K Advani, has reportedly asked Congress to view the Karnataka assembly elections as a precursor of what is to come in the Lok Sabha elections due in less than a year. If he looked closer at the results, he might wish to reconsider that statement.

The fact is that if all the assembly segments in Karnataka voted exactly the same way in the Lok Sabha polls as they did in these election, that would lead to a serious setback for Advani’s party. The BJP would then win just 10 of the state’s 28 Lok Sabha seats, which have been recast as part of the delimitation exercise, compared to the 18 seats the party won in 2004.

The Congress on the other hand, would improve its tally from a mere 8 last time to exactly half the seats, or 14. The JD(S), which had won two seats in 2004, would now walk away with four come 2009.

How have we reached these bizarre conclusions? We just totalled up each party’s votes in all the assembly segments that constitute each new Lok Sabha to see who would win. Of course, votes for independents don’t total up, since it is not the same independent contesting in different segments.

The reason why the Congress does so much better in the Lok Sabha polls if the assembly results are replicated is because it has a wider spread of its votes across the state, compared to the BJP. Thus, most of the 10 seats the BJP would win — Bagalkot, Belgaum, Bellary, Davanagere, Dharwad, Haveri, Shimoga, Udupi-Chikmagalur, Bangalore North and Bangalore South — would be won by comfortable margins. The same is true of the JD(S) in the case of Hassan, Mandya, Tumkur and Bangalore Rural.

However, the Congress would win quite a few of the remaining 14 seats by fairly slim margins if these voting patterns were replicated.

In reality, of course, assembly voting patterns are never replicated in Lok Sabha polls. To begin with, independents and smaller local parties do not have quite the same presence in parliamentary elections. Further, a party like the JD(S) would also tend to do much better in assembly elections than in the larger parliamentary polls.

So, whether Congress can replicate this result next year will — apart from factors that may crop up in the meantime — depend also on where the votes of the independents, and partly of the JD(S), will go when it is time to vote for the government in New Delhi.