While most analysis focus on overall party or alliance performance, there is much to learn from an examination of individual candidates’ pe...
While most analysis focus on overall party or alliance performance, there is much to learn from an examination of individual candidates’ performance. How many MLAs re-ran and have been re-elected? How many lost? In Bihar, between 2015 and 2020, the two alliances (different alliances) obtained the same number of seats – 110 for the Mahagatbandhan and 125 for the National Democratic Alliance. However, the stability of those numbers hides a lot of volatility, which can be measured by individual candidates’ performance – what we call an incumbency analysis.
Individual incumbency refers to the ability of a sitting MLA (or MP) to win a consecutive term. The measure of individual incumbency provides a good depiction of how competitive and volatile an election was. We are able to do that through the coding of individual career paths of candidates to Indian elections, thanks to Surf, a software developed at the Trivedi Centre for Political Data. Here is our analysis of the 2020 Bihar election.
A total of 3,733 candidates contested the elections from 213 parties or as independents. Of them, 3,033 candidates (81%) contested for the first time; 10.68% of all candidates are running for a second time, 3.85% for the third time, 1.04%...
