Opinion: The "FPTP" Factor In The Karnataka Verdict

In the 2023 Karnataka election, out of many factors, "FPTP" played the most important role. As we know, elections in India follow the FPTP system.

What is FPTP and how does it work?

In the 'First-Past-The-Post' system of elections, the candidate who gets the maximum valid votes wins that constituency of the assembly or parliament. This concept is based on the analogy of the racing track. We have adopted it from Britain, which is a small island country.

The party position in Karnataka is:

BJP: 66
Congress: 135
JD(S): 19
Others: 4

While writing on the role of the FPTP system in the outcome of any election in India in a publication in 2019, I demonstrated the system with one of the possible scenarios. Here's the extract:

"We can understand the vagaries of the FPTP system in multi-cornered contests by again stating an illustration of a three-cornered contest, as it operates at its best in a contest of more than two parties. Let us assume the main contestants are A, B and C parties/ coalitions. At the beginning of the campaign process, they stand in their vote share at 36, 32 and 20 percent respectively while 12 percent are floating among other contestants. As the campaign picks up and various voting blocks shift as tectonic plates in a seismic phenomenon, many interesting patterns would emerge. One of the possible scenarios could be that by the polling day C gains by 6 points at the expense of A, both of them finally getting the share of 26 and 30 per cent respectively. In the process, it pulls down A to 30 points yet itself reaches only 26 which is not sufficient to surpass B. So, B's original share of 32 remains intact.... It is a very simplistic scenario. There would be more complex scenarios. FPTP works wonders in such situations making any correct prediction very difficult and even impossible. Thus, the main factor is not perception or influence that is generally held in the public domain but how FPTP operates and how many votes are actually polled."

Let us now see how the FPTP factor has played out in the Karnataka election. For this, we must analyse the percentage of votes and seats won by each party, as also the major swings.

The BJP polled 36.2 per cent of the votes in 2018. It won 36 per cent in 2023. So, its vote share has remained almost unchanged at 36 percent. At this vote share, it won 104 seats in 2018. But with the same vote share this time, it could manage only 66 seats, a sheer drop of 38 seats. Please note that there was no substantive reduction in its vote share.

On the other hand, its principal opponent Congress not only improved its vote share by 4.9 per cent, but it also made huge gains, winning 135 seats out of 224. How did this happen? Certainly not because of any loss to the BJP but at a massive cost to the third party, C. The third party lost 5.1 per cent of the votes and winner Congress gained 4.9 per cent. The Congress scooped up a whopping 135 seats, reducing party C, the Janata Dal (Secular), to 19 from 31. This swing resulted in the victory of the Congress, without any drop in the BJP's vote share. This is a classic case of the application and vagaries of the FPTP system.

Another interesting fact emerges from this. In the 2018 Karnataka election, the Congress received 38 per cent of the votes but won only 78 seats. On the contrary, the BJP won 104 seats at a much lower vote share of 36.2. The BJP, therefore, won 26 more seats than the Congress with a lower vote share. It was mainly because JD (S) received a much better vote share of 18.4 per cent in 2018.

This is all due to FPTP, adopted from the British system in which there is no set or direct correlation between votes polled and seats won by parties; the correlation is circuitous and at times unpredictable, if not mysterious.

(OPS Malik is a retired IPS officer.)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author.