Bihar Records Historic 64.66% Voter Turnout in 2025 Assembly Election Phase 1: What It Means

The 2025 Bihar election will be held over two phases and results will be announced on November 14 (File).

New Delhi:

The first phase of the 2025 Bihar Assembly election has recorded an unprecedented provisional voter turnout of 64.66 percent, marking the highest in the state's electoral history.

This figure surpasses the previous record of 62.57 percent set during the 2000 Assembly election. For comparison, Bihar's highest Lok Sabha election turnout was 64.6 percent in 1998. Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar expressed gratitude to voters for their remarkable participation and to poll workers for their dedication.

The significance of this increased turnout is heightened considering the recent special intensive revision of voter lists, which removed 47 lakh names. This controversial exercise was criticized by opposition parties as an attempt to disenfranchise voters from poor and marginalized communities who traditionally support them.

The state's overall voter base decreased from 7.89 crore to 7.42 crore following this revision, which could potentially influence turnout percentages even if the actual number of voters remained constant.

To illustrate, if a pre-revision election had 60 out of 100 eligible voters participating (60 percent turnout), and post-revision the eligible voter count dropped to 80, the same 60 voters would represent a 75 percent turnout. Conversely, if only 40 people voted, the figure would fall to 50 percent.

Beyond the revision's impact, conventional political wisdom suggests that high voter participation often indicates anti-incumbency sentiment, which opposition parties are hoping to capitalize on, bolstered by promises such as government employment for every household.

This pattern has been observed in Bihar's past three elections. In 2010, Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal United and the Bharatiya Janata Party alliance secured a decisive victory with 52.73 percent voter turnout, with JDU alone winning 115 seats.

Before the 2015 election, Kumar allied with longtime rival Lalu Yadav's Rashtriya Janata Dal. Voter turnout increased by 4.18 percent, and the Kumar-Yadav alliance emerged victorious.

Five years later, Kumar returned to the BJP's fold, and their alliance won again, though JDU's seat count dropped by 28, relegating it to junior partner status. The overall turnout in 2020 was 57.29 percent, slightly higher (0.38 percent) than the previous election.

The current first-phase turnout exceeds the 2020 overall turnout by 7.37 percent and is 8.46 percent higher than the 56.2 percent recorded in that year's first phase.

According to traditional electoral analysis, these figures could favor the opposition, particularly the Congress and RJD's Tejashwi Yadav, who would become chief minister if the Mahagathbandhan secures a majority. However, high voter turnouts don't always signal anti-incumbency.

For instance, in Chhattisgarh, voter participation increased by nearly seven percent between 2008 and 2013, yet the BJP won both elections. Similarly, in Madhya Pradesh, turnout rose from 67.25 percent to 72.07 percent between 2003 and 2013, with the BJP winning all three elections during this period.

Additionally, the impact of the voter list revision and deletion of 47 lakh names must be considered.

The election process is still ongoing, with only 121 of Bihar's 243 seats having voted in this phase. The remaining 122 constituencies will vote on November 11, with results to be announced on November 14.

Tejashwi Yadav was among the prominent candidates in this phase, contesting from Raghopur, a family stronghold that has elected his father Lalu and mother Rabri Devi seven times in the past nine elections. Yadav has represented this constituency since 2015.

Other notable constituencies that voted today included Tarapur, contested by Deputy Chief Minister and BJP state unit president Samrat Choudhary; Alinagar, where popular folk singer Maithili Thakur is the BJP candidate; and Mokama, which saw controversy following JDU candidate Anant Singh's arrest in a murder case.

In the 2020 election, the RJD emerged as the single-largest party with 75 seats, one more than the BJP. The JDU secured 43 seats, while the Congress, an RJD ally, won 28 seats.