The rebel factor in Karnataka elections: What are the chances of defectors winning?
With the Karnataka Assembly election just around the corner, defections from one party to the other are becoming more frequent. What are the chances of defectors winning the election? Find out here.
By Piyush Aggarwal: An analysis by India Today's Data Intelligence Team (DIU) shows that if a defector or turncoat contested as a Bharatiya Janata Party or a Congress candidate, the chances of winning have been relatively high compared to the Janata Dal (Secular).
DIU analysed data from the state's last three assembly elections — 2008, 2013 and 2018. For instance, in 2008, out of 107 turncoat candidates who contested the election, 25 won, and 82 lost. In 2013, 16 turncoat candidates won, while 87 lost out of 103 who contested. In 2018, the number of turncoat candidates increased to 131, with 37 winning and 94 losing the state assembly elections.
Overall, in the last three assembly elections, of the 341 turncoat candidates who contested, 78 or merely 23 per cent won, while 263 lost. Also, the number of turncoat candidates has been increasing over time, with the highest number being in the 2018 election. However, the number of candidates who won the election has not increased proportionally.
Looking at the party-wise performance of the turncoats, the percentage of turncoat wins varies among different parties, with the BJP consistently having the highest percentage of turncoat wins in the last two elections.
The trend in the data suggests that turncoats tend to have a higher chance of winning elections from the party in power or the party that is likely to win the election. The data also indicates that the BJP is more attractive to turncoats than the other parties, possibly due to its popularity and electoral gains.
The data suggests that while some turncoat candidates could secure electoral victories, most of them fail to do so in the state. It also highlights the potential risk for political instability and lack of loyalty among political representatives when turncoat behaviour becomes prevalent in a political system.
For perspective, the winnability of turncoats is much lower in states like Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat.
In Gujarat, for instance, as many as 261 turncoats contested the elections between 1998 and 2017, according to data available at Ashoka University’s Trivedi Centre for Political Data. The number of such winners was 36, or one in every seven turncoats. DIU’s analysis found that the winnability of rebels did not improve even after joining parties that eventually got the verdict.
The situation in Uttar Pradesh has been slightly different. As the average of the last ten assembly elections between 1980 and 2017 shows, less than 15 per cent of party hoppers reentered the assembly, which is on the lower side. Numbers reveal that the probability of only those siding with the eventual winner is higher among those who switch sides ahead of elections.
