The rural-urban divide in the Gujarat verdict of 2022

Updated - December 10, 2022 11:48 am IST

Voters wait in queues at a polling station during the first phase of Gujarat Assembly elections at Aliabet in Bharuch district on December 1, 2022. Photo: Twitter/@ECISVEEP via PTI

Voters wait in queues at a polling station during the first phase of Gujarat Assembly elections at Aliabet in Bharuch district on December 1, 2022. Photo: Twitter/@ECISVEEP via PTI

In urban constituencies, the BJP polled 58.2% votes while the Congress polled merely 23.9% votes.

Though the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Congress could not perform well against BJP’s tsunami in these elections, but the trend of rural and urban support for the Congress and the BJP was visible even in these elections.

Despite a poor performance, the Congress managed to poll more votes in the rural constituencies compared to the urban constituencies. It is important to note that the AAP polled almost similar proportion of votes both in rural and urban constituencies, breaking the myth of it being a part of urban voters (Table 1).

The AAP’s overall vote share has been less than 13% but its support base is more or less evenly spread. It polled 13.2% votes in rural constituencies and 12.7% votes in urban constituencies. Similarly, the Congress trailed behind the BJP by 17% in rural constituencies, but in urban constituencies, the BJP’s vote share is more than double of the Congress vote share.

In urban constituencies, the BJP polled 58.2% votes while the Congress polled merely 23.9% votes. Clearly, not only BJP registered significant victory, it continued its massive domination amongst urban voters of Gujarat.

(Sanjay Kumar is Professor and co-director of Lokniti-CSDS. Mahashweta Jani is the State coordinator in Gujarat)

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