BJP’s vote share surge in Bengal linked to minority vote split: Analysts

A near eight per cent jump in BJP’s vote share compared with its 2021 performance propelled the party to bag an additional 130 seats in the West Bengal assembly this time, pushing the Trinamool Congress to a catastrophic defeat in the state, Election Commission data showed.
Analysts opined that the massive hike in support would not have been possible without sizeable expansion of consolidation of Hindu votes along with a certain split in the minority community’s voting pattern in the state.
Initial interpretation of the poll data also suggested that the BJP swept seats where the voter turnout was over 85 per cent, and the two parties fared more or less evenly in seats where 95 per cent people or more participated in the polls this year.
The saffron camp amassed 45.84 per cent votes in its kitty, up 7.87 per cent compared with the 37.97 per cent votes it managed in 2021, the EC data said. The jump accounted for its tally of 207 seats in the state assembly, which was restricted to 77 seats in the previous elections.
From the TMC viewpoint, the party’s vote share shrank from 48.02 per cent in 2021 to 40.8 per cent, a slide of 7.22 per cent, which cost it a deathly blow of 135 seats – down to 80 seats compared to its previous tally of 215.
Data available from the poll watchdog showed that the BJP won 172 seats in segments where the voter turnout was between 85 and 95 per cent. The TMC’s gains in the same category stood at just 45 seats.
In constituencies where more than 95 per cent people voted, the TMC won 37 seats, while the BJP was victorious in 28.
In the current edition of the two-phase polls, West Bengal recorded a record average voter turnout of 92.47 per cent – which the EC said was the highest ever since Independence.
Poll analyst Shubhomoy Maitra attributed the figures to a consolidation of Hindu votes in the state, along with a split in the Muslim vote share.
He noted that a significant portion of Muslim voters who did not support the saffron camp, also did not vote for Mamata Banerjee, and instead opted for a region-based third alternative.
“In my personal assessment, the consolidation of majority community votes went up by about 10 notches over and above its previous integration of about 55 per cent. Simultaneously, a sizeable section of minority voters indirectly supported the BJP by opting for alternatives to the Trinamool,” he said.
“It seems that the persecution phobia of a section of minorities when it comes to the BJP was overshadowed by their rejection of the TMC, owing to their disgruntlement over the party’s misrule,” Maitra added.
The academic cited examples of poll results in the Muslim-dominant Karandighi assembly seat in Uttar Dinajpur district and Kaliganj seat in Nadia in support of his observation.
In Karandighi, the BJP humbled the TMC by a margin of nearly 20,000 votes in a race where the contesting CPI(M) candidate managed to draw nearly 40,000 votes, finishing third. In Kaliganj, where the TMC won by a margin of a little over 10,000 votes, the candidate of the struggling CPI(M) still managed to poll nearly 23,000 votes in her favour.
Maitra also referred to Domkal, the lone seat won by the CPI(M) in the Muslim-majority Murshidabad district, where TMC candidate and former IPS officer Humayun Kabir was in for an unpleasant surprise, losing by a margin of 16296 votes.
“The result wouldn’t have been possible if a large section of minority voters hadn’t rejected the TMC,” he said.
Notably, the chief of newly-formed Aam Janata Unnayan Party Humayun Kabir won both his Nowda and Rejinagar seats in Murshidabad over his nearest BJP rivals, while Indian Secular Front leader Nawsad Siddique triumphed over TMC’s Saokat Molla in the minority-dominated Bhangar segment of South 24 Parganas.
The BJP’s IT cell chief Amit Malviya claimed that the party won 12 seats with more than 40 per cent Muslim population, including four where the minorities exceeded 50 per cent of the population – all from the Malda and Murshidabad regions.
“This is not a narrow or manufactured mandate; it is broad-based, emphatic, and rooted in voter conviction across regions,” he wrote on X.