The ripples caused by the recent elections in Punjab and Uttarakhand have begun to settle, and attention has shifted to the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) elections and the likely outcome of the Uttar Pradesh elections.

Election outcomes are rarely yielding decisive conclusions and anti-incumbency is being widely regarded as the preferred option of voters, but there have been many contrary examples of incumbents weathering the anti-incumbency sentiment. And suggestions that inflation, electricity, water, housing are decisive determinants of voter options suffer from oversimplification.

Notwithstanding these ambiguities, election results do suggest a marked indifference, if not hostility, of urban voters towards incumbent governments. In the 2004 Andhra Pradesh elections that ousted the incumbent TDP government, the Congress achieved an average strike rate of 78.23 per cent, but in city constituencies it was 85.71 per cent. Against this, the TDP’s strike rate in cities was 14.2 per cent lower than their average strike rate. In Rajasthan in 2003, the BJP won with an average strike rate of 60 per cent, but it was 86.67 per cent in city constituencies. The Congress scored a strike rate of only 13.33 per cent in cities against its average strike rate of 28 per cent.

In Punjab, the BJP-Akali Dal combine had a strike rate of 80 per cent in cities, far above the average 67.76 per cent. On the other hand, the Congress, could score only 20 per cent in cities against its average strike rate of 37.93 per cent. Similarly, in Uttarakhand, the BJP scored a strike rate of 90 per cent in city constituencies, way above the 49 per cent average. And the Congress scored only 10 per cent in cities against its average of 30.43 per cent.

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