New Maharashtra assembly has lowest number of Muslims ever

A lot of quick explanations have been thrown around to explain the results of the recent Maharashtra assembly elections: the continued effect of the Modi wave, the anti-incumbency effect, the snapping of alliances, the engineering of defections before the campaign. But to measure the impact of these assertions, it is necessary to back them with data.While the Modi wave cannot be measured due to the sweeping character of the assertion, we can provide data on some other indicators of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s success and of other parties’ fortunes and misfortunes.

We can also look as the state of representation of women and minorities to see whether these elections mark a departure or a continuation from previous trends.

1.     Candidates’ information and deposits

 Elections in India have attracted larger numbers of candidates over the years. A large part of this rise is due to the increase in the number of independent candidates and of micro-parties. Despite the rise, however, the number of effective candidates and of parties represented in the assembly has been stable over time.

Another way to measure the effectiveness of candidates is to look at the number of candidates who forfeit their deposits ‒ meaning those who have gained less than one-sixth of the total votes polled in their constituency.

These elections confirmed the trend of the increase in the total number of candidates, a trend that was also visible in the late 1980s and the 1990s. It reiterated that the higher the number of candidates, the higher the ratio of candidates losing their deposit: around 90% in the 2014 elections.

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