Election results 2024: Congress improves tally, BJP-JD(S) retain majority in Karnataka

The NDA alliance - BJP and JD(S) - retained Karnataka, while the Congress improved its performance in the Kalyana Karnataka region. In 2014, while the seat split was the same between the three parties, the Congress won seats in the State’s south or the Mysuru region.

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The JD(S) candidate Prajwal Revanna, who was involved in a sexual abuse case and later suspended by the party, lost in Haasan constituency to Congress candidate Shreyas M. Patel who won with a margin of over 40,000 votes.

In Bangalore South, BJP candidate Tejasvi Surya won with a hefty margin of over 2,70,000 votes against the Congress candidate Sowmya Reddy.

Senior Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge’s son-in-law won from Kalaburagi by over 27,000 votes.

The total voter turnout in the State was 69.56% in phase two and 71.84% in phase three. Keeping with the trend of lower turnout in cities, Bangalore South, Central and North all recorded just over 50% polling. These three constituencies have close to 80 lakh voters registered. Around 43,11,000 people voted.

However, the State’s overall voter turnout recorded an estimated 70.64%. This is higher than the 2009 and 2014 figures.

As the Congress significantly improved on its 2014 tally, its vote share rose to meet that of the BJP. While the difference in their vote shares in 2014 was 19.6 percentage points, this reduced to 0.63 percentage points. In fact, this was the highest vote share that the party got since 1999.

On the other hand, the JD(S) registered the lowest vote share since 1999 at 5.6%. In 2014, it won the same number of seats as this year, but the vote share in 2014 was higher at 11.1% in 2014. However, the JD(S) was instrumental in bagging for the BJP the seven or eight constituencies that have a sizeable number of Vokkaliga voters.

Of the 13 incumbents contesting the elections, seven won and six lost. Of those who lost, four were BJP candidates, one Congress and one JD(S). Radhakrishna Doddamani’s victory came after his father-in-law Kharge’s defeat in 2019. Kharge was defeated by a margin of over 95,000 votes after winning 11 general elections. Congress candidate Priyanka Jarkiholi defeated the incumbent MP Annasaheb Jolle. She was the only Congress candidate to win in the Kittur Karnataka region.