With a total voter turnout of 68.62%, Karnataka has created a record in polling ever since the first general election in 1952. While the number is a tiny bump up from 2014’s 67.2%, it is an almost 10% increase from 2009’s 58.82%.
Among the 28 seats that went to polls, barely half a dozen —- Mandya, Uttara Kannada, Tumkur, Chitradurga, Dharwad and Shimoga with the highest positive swings in voter turnout — can claim the credit for helping Karnataka create a new record.
Mandya, the battleground for a high-intensity contest, did not just record the highest voter turnout of 80.23%, but also showed the highest upward swing polling a whopping 8.76% more compared to its performance in 2014 Lok Sabha polls.
Analysts believe that not just Mandya but seats like Dakshina Kannada, Tumkur, Kolar, Hassan and Shimoga, that saw the highest voter turnout this time around, owed their polling percentages to the high-intensity battles, clash of personalities, high-profile candidates, but most importantly micro level waves driven by local agendas. “One could call it a general wave if variations in polling were a uniform phenomenon across all seats but these are specific to a few seats. Local waves are evident,” said Dr Narendar Pani, political analyst and professor at National Institute of Advanced Studies.
Considering that the voting percentage is only a slight increase from 2014, A Narayana, Political researcher and faculty at Azim Premji University, is confident that there is no general wave that influenced voting patterns. “High positive swing in polling is only in seats of significant contests and intense fights. For example, JDS is worried in Mandya as much as BJP is in Shimoga,” he said.
The battle in Mandya between BJP-backed Independent candidate Sumalatha Ambareesh and CM H D Kumaraswamy’s son and former PM H D Deve Gowda’s grandson Nikhil Kumar set the tone for all high-intensity seats ensuring people, determined to cast votes, landed at the polling stations.
In absolute contradiction, Bangalore South saw the steepest fall in voter turnout polling 2.28 per cent less than 2014’s performance.The key contest between Congress-JD(S) coalition candidate B K Hariprasad and BJP’s surprise pick Tejasvi Surya, according to voters, may have left the voters unenthused. “Downward swing generally occurs if voters in a party no longer support the candidate. They don’t want to go to the other side and prefer to abstain,” said Dr Pani.
He added that a massive upward swing like in Mandya or Uttara Kannada definitely means there was a presence of wave but which way the tide turns cannot be predicted. “An upward swing could be for or against the candidate but shows that voters are determined to vote,” he said.
Three constituencies of Bangalore registered the lowest voting percentages in all of 28 seats in Karnataka.“The urban voter is not as dependent on an elected representative as a rural voter. There is little that urban voters expect from their politicians unlike a rural voter where the relationship between the leader and the voter is personal,” said Narayana.
While Bengaluru was chided for its abysmal voter turnout, many citizens groups continue to insist that faulty electoral rolls, fake voters on the list could be a huge factor for the low turnouts.
POLL FEVER
1952 - 51.93%
2009 - 58.82%
2014 - 67.20 %
2019 - 68.62%
