2019 Lok Sabha Elections: NOTA Vote share highest in Bihar
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
May 30, 2019
Bihar recorded the highest NOTA vote share in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. It is the only State/UT in the entire country where the vote share for NOTA touched 2%.
As noted in an earlier story by Factly, the vote share for NOTA went down further in the 2019 Lok Sabha general elections despite calls to choose NOTA. State level analysis reveals that Bihar polled the highest vote share for NOTA at 2%.
19 States/UTs poll less than 1% for NOTA
Out of the 36 States/UTs, NOTA polled less than 1% in 19 of them. NOTA polled less than 0.5% in Nagaland, Manipur, Haryana & Lakshadweep, the lowest being in Nagaland where NOTA polled 0.21%. On the other hand, Bihar polled the highest for NOTA in terms of vote share. Here, NOTA vote share touched 2%, the only state where this happened. And the NOTA share was more than 1.5% in only two other places, that too the UTs of Puducherry and Daman & Diu.
In terms of absolute number of votes, NOTA polled more than 8 lakh votes in Bihar, an average of more than 20,000 votes per constituency.  This is way more than the national average of around 12,000 NOTA votes per constituency. Though NOTA polled more than 7 lakh votes in Uttar Pradesh, the average NOTA votes per constituency was only around 9000. After Bihar, the average NOTA votes per constituency was highest in Andhra Pradesh (average of 18795) followed by Chhattisgarh where the average was close to 18000.  The average was less than the national average of around 12,000 votes per constituency in 25 of the 36 States/UTs. In states like Goa, Kerala, Haryana & Delhi, NOTA polled fewer votes per constituency than the rest of the country.
NOTA Vote share changed substantially in 9 States/UTs
In 9 of the 36 States/UTs, the vote share for NOTA changed substantially compared to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. In Andhra Pradesh, the NOTA share went up from 0.6% in 2014 to 1.5% in 2019. Bihar & Punjab are the only other states where NOTA share increased substantially. In many other states, the NOTA share decreased substantially like in Kerala where it decreased from 1.2% in 2014 to 0.5% in 2019. In Meghalaya, it decreased from 2.8% in 2014 to 0.8% in 2019.