BJP gets smaller share of fauji votes than in 2014 Maharashtra assembly polls

MUMBAI: It is widely believed that the BJP gets a much larger share of postal votes—the overwhelming majority of which are from people serving in the armed forces and paramilitary—than its share of the overall vote. So prevalent is this view that even psephologists and political pundits on TV warn us not to take the early trends in results as indicative because those are based on counting of postal votes.Data from the Maharashtra elections, however, show that at least in this state the assumption is wrong.

Both in the 2014 and 2019 assembly polls, the NCP was the only party among the four big four in the state that got a significantly higher share of postal (read fauji) votes than it did of the overall votes ( see graphic). In 2014, the NCP got 22.1% of the 2.1 lakh-odd postal votes in the state assembly elections, while its overall voteshare was much lower at 17.2%. Similarly, in the 2019 assembly polls, it got 20.2% of the nearly 2.8 lakh postal votes cast in the state. Again, its overall voteshare of 16.7% was significantly lower.
The Sena also, in these elections, got a higher share of postal votes (17.1%) than its overall voteshare of 16.4%. This was unlike in 2014, where it got 18.5% of postal votes and 19.4% of the overall votes.
BJP and Congress got exactly as much of the postal votes this time as they did of the overall votes. In the BJP’s case, the share was 25.8% in both cases and for the Congress was 15.9%. Clearly, faujis from Maharashtra were neither more nor less likely to support these two national parties than civilian voters. In an election in which the BJP campaigned extensively on nationalism and its ‘bold’ approach to national security, this is a particularly surprising finding.
In 2014, the BJP’s share of postal votes was slightly higher than its share of overall votes, but by just 0.5 percentage points. The Congress in those elections too had got the same share of postal votes as it did of votes cast in EVMs.
The combined BJP-Sena share of postal votes in 2019, at 42.9% was sharply down from 46.8% in 2014, just as its overall vote share went down from 47.2% to 42.2%.
What explains the slightly higher share for NCP in postal votes? It may well have to do with the regions in which postal votes are concentrated. In the 60 seats of the Mumbai region, for instance, there were less than 15,000 postal votes spread over 60 seats, an average of less than 250 votes per seat. In contrast, western Maharashtra had an average of over 1,200 postal votes per seat. The NCP’s strength in this region would have helped it secure more fauji votes.
Another possible reason could be that certain communities tend to be more represented in the armed forces than others for historical reasons and parties that have a social base among those communities would therefore tend to have a larger share of postal votes.
Either way, what it suggests is that just like other parts of the population, voting preferences of those serving in the armed forces are determined by a host of local factors and not just grand national narratives.