Few clues in queues

Charu Sudan Kasturi, TT: New Delhi, Feb. 7: Lengthy voter queues outside Delhi's polling booths today triggered competing claims from the BJP and the Aam Aadmi Party on the outcome of the elections, but a high turnout may reflect a last-mile push by key contenders rather than offer a clear clue for crystal gazers.

Delhi logged a 67 per cent voter turnout in its second Assembly polls in a little over a year, up by more than 3 per cent from the 2013 elections that had thrown up a hung verdict.

But political scientists who track voter behaviour cautioned against concluding that more voters than usual meant a Delhi-wide vote against or for any formation.

Recent elections in Delhi and the rest of the country instead point to a more complex conclusion, they said: that parties that saw themselves as in the contest this time may have tried extra hard to bring supporters to polling booths.

"Whenever elections are close, or perceived to be close, you almost universally see a higher voter turnout," Sanmitra Ghosh, a political economist at Jadavpur University, toldThe Telegraph. "It's a theory called the calculus of voting."

By late afternoon, as voting percentages appeared to be shooting above their normal levels, the BJP and the AAP - the two major contenders in these elections - shot political arrows suggesting a high turnout would help them.

"We have received complaints from several places that queues are moving so slowly that voters are returning home without voting," AAP leader Kumar Vishwas said in the afternoon.

Later, as exit polls pointed to an AAP victory initially citing voters who had voted till 3pm, the BJP's chief ministerial candidate Kiran Bedi argued that hectic voting by her party's supporters in the final hours would help overcome any early deficit.

"I am confident that people will come out in the final few hours of voting to ensure Delhi receives a decisive, clean government," Bedi said.

But over the past few years, almost every Assembly or parliamentary election has ended with a higher than average polling percentage, including many record turnouts.

And these polls have thrown up contrasting results: the 2014 Lok Sabha elections saw a 10-year government dumped, but Assembly elections in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Odisha threw up resounding victories for the incumbent.

But in Delhi, a deep class divide may have shown up in the voter turnout, said Varun Sahni, professor of international politics and disarmament at Jawaharlal Nehru University.

The "less-propertied" sections of Delhi's voters seem to have swung towards the AAP, and the better off towards the BJP, Sahni said, clarifying he was cautious about reading too much into polling figures.

"The less-propertied are the section of our population that usually turns out to vote," Sahni said. "If there's a significant hike in voting percentages, it could suggest that the propertied have also turned out. They could be the swing group."

A higher voter turnout also suggests a voter perception that the election was not "normal," Ghosh said.