Gujarat results do not fit into a neat picture
A closer look at the recently Assembly election results casts doubt on the theory of urban BJP versus rural Congress vote, barring Saurashtra
It has been repeatedly said that urban voters won Gujarat for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), while rural Gujarat helped the Congress improve its performance.
A deeper look at the results and winning margins in the recent legislative assembly election shows that only rural Saurashtra turned for the Congress. The rest of rural Gujarat, including tribal communities (considered the Congress' traditional support base) showed incremental inclination towards the BJP, not the Congress.
And, contrary to intuition, urban Gujarat did move a step closer to the Congress, if you look at the substantial increase in the victory margin of winning Congress candidates. Congress increased its tally in urban and semi-urban areas by 3, while the BJP also increased the average margin of victory in urban seats.
Our analysis comes after putting Gujarat's assembly constituencies into five categories. Rural Saurashtra and the tribal areas have been taken out of rural Gujarat, creating three rural regions: Rural Saurashtra, ST (Scheduled Tribe) constituencies and rest of rural Gujarat. Urban Gujarat with cities housing more than 200,000 population and semiurban Gujarat with cities housing between 100,000 and 200,000 people make up the remaining two urban regions. For example, seats from Rajkot city fall in the ‘urban Gujarat’ category, while the assembly seat Rajkot Rural falls in ‘rural Saurashtra’ category. The coastal small-town Porbandar, though in Saurashtra, falls in ‘semi-urban Gujarat’ category.
Rural Saurashtra is the only region where the tide turned from the BJP to the Congress. Voters from here-represented by 32 seats-favoured the Congress, increasing its seat tally from 10 in 2012 to 24 in 2017, while pulling the BJP down from the earlier 19 to seven. Also, see the average winning margin. In the 10 seats in rural Saurashtra the Congress won in 2012, this average winning margin (sum of winning margins divided by number of seats won by the party in the region category) was 5,444 votes. This almost tripled to a margin of 14,570 votes in 2017. The BJP's reduction in seats is accompanied by a 40 per cent reduction in average winning margin in rural Saurashtra, from 15,963 votes to 10,113.
Considering the Bharatiya Tribal Party (BTP) in the Congress fold, as they contested in a pre-poll alliance, tribal areas maintained their support to the Congress fold by returning 17 of the 27 seats.
However, the average winning margin of the Congress dropped, from 22,796 in 2012 to 17,886 votes in 2017. The BJP's average winning margin jumped 50 per cent, from 15,134 to 23,303, indicating better support than last election.
This brings us to the third, biggest and most important rural category, the Rest of Gujarat, which has 63 seats. The Congress, although increasing the tally in this region from 25 to 26, experienced a 10 per cent drop in their average winning margin.
The BJP not only maintained its first position with 36 on 63 seats but improved the average winning margin by a percentage point. So, barring Saurashtra and the tribal belt, rural Gujarat marginally increased its support to the BJP.
As for the cities, the BJP lost two seats in urban Gujarat and one seat in semi-urban Gujarat as compared to 2012. However, their margins of victory increased in both categories. Their average margin of victory for urban seats went up 14 percentage points to 44,751 votes, from an already high base of 39,364, nowhere seen in any of the categories for any party.
The Congress actually improved its winning margins by 35 percentage points in small towns and by much more in big cities. But, got no more than 13 urban seats, compared to 10 in 2012. Urban results thus represent greater polarisation towards the winner than the last election.
Considering an average voter population of 240,000 per constituency, cities with more than 200,000 residents are considered predominantly urban for the analysis. There are 41 such constituencies, while 19 semi-urban constituencies.
There are 48 constituencies in 11 districts that constitute Saurashtra. Removing the urban and semi-urban constituencies from the region for analysis, 32 assembly constituencies represent rural Saurashtra. Now that the urban and semiurban constituencies, those reserved for STs and the rural ones from Saurashtra have been categorised, the RoG category consists of rural constituencies excluding Saurashtra and the tribal belt bordering Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh.
Constituencies reserved for scheduled castes have not been considered a different category, since they behave very closely similar to normal unreserved constituencies, our previous analysis and the works of Francesca Jensenius have demonstrated.