Karnataka polls: Will Cong push past halfway mark on its own?

Data from the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) website shows that the Congress has a vote share of around 44.5%, significantly higher than 38% during the previous elections in 2018, when it won 80 seats.

With initial trends showing a clear edge for the Congress in Karnataka, the only question remains is whether it gets past the 113-seat majority mark in the 224-seat state assembly on its own.

Celebrations at the Congress headquarters in Delhi on Saturday. (PTI)

Data from the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) website shows that the Congress has a vote share of around 44.5%, significantly higher than 38% during the previous elections in 2018, when it won 80 seats.

To be sure, the BJP’s vote share has, at the time of publishing, not dipped from the 2018 level of about 36%. It won 104 in those polls, but was pipped to the state assembly after the Congress and Janata Dal (Secular) stitched together a post-poll alliance.

The Congress edged the BJP in vote shares, even if not in seat share, in 2018, despite being outplayed by the JD(S) in the Old Mysuru region.

The key victim so far, then, appears to be the JD(S), with the contest sharpening into a bipolar one. The vote share of the party, led by former prime minister HD Deve Gowda, has dropped to just about 10%, nearly half of its 18% share in 2018.

Trends show the party holding on to its traditional seats in the Old Mysuru region, but failing to find traction anywhere else in the state.

To be sure, only about 10% of the roughly 38 million votes polled in the state have been counted so far. So, the numbers are sure to change over the next few hours.

While the Congress has done reasonably well in almost all regions of the state, it has performed much better in the northern parts, which is home to the party’s national president Mallikarjun Kharge.

The party seems to be ahead even in the Lingayat dominated Central and Mumbai-Karnataka regions, an indication that it was able to break the saffron party’s stronghold over the Lingayat vote bank.

Of all the regions, trends show that the BJP is ahead in Coastal Karnataka, which sends only 21 MLAs to the state assembly. However, the Congress’ performance still appears to be slightly better than most exit polls predicted.

The India Today-MyAxis exit poll predicted 122-140 seats for the Congress and 62-80 for the BJP.