TRS sees spike in polling percentage, but seat count falls

Hyderabad: The Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) has got a higher voting share in 2019 Parliamentary elections compared to 2014 elections, but interestingly the number of winning seats reduced this time.

While in 2014, the TRS bagged 11 MP seats, this time it had to be content with nine seats.

The TRS got 34.9 percentage of voting share in 2014 elections, while in the present elections the voting share jumped to over 41.3 per cent as of late evening and this figure is likely to increase marginally as the declaration of results, officially, of all 17 segments was yet to be made.

Due to VVPATs counting and other formalities, declaration of results got delayed as expected. The first official results to come out were of Karimnagar, Mahbubnagar, Nagarkurnool, Nalgonda and Warangal.

Although election commission results website displayed that counting was still in progress in rest of the constituencies, the overall leads and trends clearly indicated who is going to be the winner.

Accordingly, if the party-wise break of winning seats is considered, nine constituencies will go into TRS account, with BJP set to bag four seats and Congress three seats.

AIMIM, as predicted, has successfully retained Hyderabad, its fortress for several decades.

If we dwell further into vote share among different parties, in 2014 the voting share was split between TRS (34.9 per cent), Congress (24.7 per cent), TDP (12.3 per cent), BJP (10.5 per cent), YSRCP (4.5 per cent) while others got 13.1 per cent vote share.

This time however it was a triangular fight between the TRS, the Congress and the BJP with TRS candidates facing stiff competition from either of the opposition parties in majority segments.

Parties like TDP and YSRCP were also not in picture this time and hence their voting share was missing from 2019 figures.

As per updated reports, the TRS got 41.3 per cent voting share while Congress 29.5 and BJP 19.4 per cent. AIMIM secured 2.78 per cent voting share while others quota was 4.87 per cent.

The Congress and BJP put up a far better performance in 2019 elections compared to 2014 and the increased voting share was a pointer to that.

Against 24.7 voting share in 2014 when it bagged two seats, Congress secured 29.5 per cent voting share and seats number increased to three.

The big surprise in this election has to be the BJP party. It's voting percentage almost doubled in 2019 (19.42 per cent) compared to 10.5 per cent in 2014. As a result, its seats tally is set to touch four seats this time compared to a lone seat (Secunderabad) in 2014.

Another interesting thing to be noted is the fact that the TRS voting share has dipped by nearly five per cent if the assembly elections held six months ago is taken into account.

The TRS secured 46.9 per cent voting share in assembly elections and 88 seats, while Congress share was much the same (28.4 per cent) and it had to be content with wins in 19 constituencies.

Voting share of the BJP was just over seven per cent in the recent assembly elections where it won only a single seat.