Understanding TMC’s surprise 29-seat romp in West Bengal
TMC's big victory in West Bengal in 2021 assembly elections was due to gaining seats in all sub-regions compared to 2019.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) stunned everyone when it won 18 of the 42 parliamentary constituencies in West Bengal in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. While the Trinamool Congress (TMC) achieved a big victory in the 2021 assembly elections in the state, most exit polls gave the BJP a larger seat share than the TMC in the 2024 polls. The results have shown that they got it completely wrong. What explains the TMC’s big victory in West Bengal in these elections?
In the state as a whole, the TMC’s vote share has increased by just about two percentage points between 2019 and 2024, but its seat share has increased by a huge 19 percentage points. The BJP has had an equal reaction, losing 16.7 percentage points in overall seat share with a loss of just 1.8 percentage points in vote share. What explains this large asymmetry between the change in vote and seat shares?
The answer to this question lies in the region-wise dynamic in the state. Trivedi Center for Political Data (TCPD) classifies West Bengal into five sub regions: North Bengal, South Bengal, Burdwan, Junglemahal, and Central Bengal. The BJP had done extremely well in the North Bengal and Junglemahal sub regions in the 2019 elections, winning nine of the 12 parliamentary constituencies (PCs) in these two regions combined. The only reason the TMC managed to finish marginally ahead of the BJP in the 2019 elections was its ability to retain its dominance in the South Bengal region where it won 13 of the 15 PCs.
Not only has the TMC retained its dominance in the South Bengal region, it has managed to gain seats from the BJP in every sub-region of the state compared to the 2019 tally.
How did the TMC make gains across the state? A sub region-wise vote share comparison shows that in every other region except south Bengal it also managed to win a section of the non-BJP non-TMC vote share compared to where it stood in 2019. In South Bengal, the non-BJP, non-TMC vote has actually increased compared to 2019, but this has come at the cost of the BJP rather than the TMC.
