6 years on, NOTA vote share declines. Reserved seats still poll a higher NOTA share
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
January 4, 2020
It’s been 6 years since the introduction of NOTA on the EVM. Data from 46 elections and thousands of constituencies indicates that NOTA is being preferred by a fewer percentage of voters than 6 years ago. Another trend worth noting is that NOTA vote share is higher in reserved constituencies than in General constituencies.
Oneof the common reasons cited by the electorate regarding not voting in anelection is that none of the candidates in the fray deserve to be theirrepresentative. With the introduction of NOTA  in 2013, an option was provided tothe electorate, who usually stay away from voting because of a lack of choice,to come forward and participate in the election process. Voting for NOTA isseen as an expression of dissent against parties and their choice ofcandidates.
Tobolster the choice of NOTA, a dedicated
symbol for NOTA was also introduced in 2015 to aid thevoters who intend to use NOTA option.  Asobserved in an earlier story on Factly, the share of votes for NOTA has been on
the decline since its inception. In an another story, it wasobserved that while there is a decline in NOTA vote share even in the reservedseats, the vote share of NOTA in reserved seats is still substantially
higher than the General category seats.
Inthis story, we look at the NOTA trends after the recently concluded electionsfor Jharkhand assembly in reserved & general constituencies. It has to benoted that only general election results are considered for this analysis.
Share
of NOTA votes higher among ST reserved seats in both Assembly and Lok Sabha
elections
Atotal of 46 elections were conducted since NOTA was introduced in 2013, ofwhich 44 elections were Assembly general elections and 2 were for the Lok Sabha( 2014 & 2019 ).
Ofthe 44 Assembly elections, the 13 states of Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh,Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Mizoram, Delhi,Odisha, Rajasthan, Sikkim and Telangana had two assembly general electionsduring this period (2013- 2019).
Electionswere conducted to 5671 assembly constituencies of which, 3980 seats wereGeneral category seats, 822 were SC Reserved seats and 869 were ST reservedseats.
Inthe two Lok Sabha general elections since 2013, 1086 constituencies went topolls of which 820 were General category seats, 168 were SC reserved and 98 STreserved seats.
Greatest
NOTA vote share in ST reserved seats
Amongthe elections held for various State assemblies, ST reserved seats have polledthe highest share of NOTA votes with 2.31%. Out of 8.49 crores votes polled inST reserved assembly constituencies between 2013-2019, around 19.65 lakh voteswere polled for NOTA.
Onthe other hand, SC reserved seats polled 17.49 lakh votes for NOTA whichaccounts to 1.31%  of 13.34 crore totalvotes. The least share of NOTA votes in assembly elections is among thenon-reserved General Seats with only 1.1% votes going for NOTA.
Similarly,even in  Lok Sabha elections, ST reservedseats have the highest share for NOTA with 1.9% of total votes polled. It isfollowed by SC reserved seats with 1.1% and General Seats with 0.9% for boththe Lok Sabha elections held during 2014 and 2019.
Meanwhile,NOTA has a higher share in Assembly elections compared to that of Lok Sabhaelections across all types of constituencies – General, SC & ST reserved.
Slight
fall in the percentage of NOTA in reserved seats for 2019
Postthe Lok Sabha elections in 2019, Factly highlighted the continued fall in the share of NOTA votes year on year, albeit the reservedconstituencies  reporting a higher share.
Post2019 Lok Sabha elections, there were assembly general elections in the statesof Maharashtra, Haryana and Jharkhand.  Priorto the elections in these three states, the share of NOTA votes in the assemblyelections in 2019 (for the states of Arunachal Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Sikkim& Odisha) was 1.01%, 1.17% and 2.1% in General, SC and ST reserved constituenciesrespectively.
Postthe assembly elections for these three states, the NOTA vote share in SC and STseats in 2019 was down to 1.16% and 1.99% respectively. Meanwhile, there is aslight increase in the share of NOTA votes in General constituencies, i.e. 1.08%
Specificto these three states, the share of NOTA votes was 1.13%, 1.15% and 1.91% forGeneral, SC and ST reserved seats respectively.
Theoverall NOTA vote share in SC reserved seats in 2019 decreased despite a higherNOTA vote share in  Jharkhand’s SC reserved seats (2.04%). The higher share in Jharkhand was offset by only 0.47%NOTA votes in SC reserved seats of Haryana.
Meanwhile,the slight increase in the NOTA share within General seats can be attributed tothe 1.3% NOTA vote share in Maharashtra assembly elections. It may be notedthat Latur -Rural which is a General Seat, polled the highest
ever NOTA share of 13.78% in the 2019 Maharashtra Assemblyelections.
Asfor the Lok
Sabha elections, the reserved seats have a greater share of NOTA ,even though the numbers have fallen in 2019 Lok Sabha elections compared to2014.
‘NOTA
votes higher than victory margin’ happens more in  reserved seats
Forthe year 2019, in 38 Assembly constituencies and 27 Lok Sabha constituencies,the NOTA votes were higher than that of the margin of victory.
Inthe 2014 Lok Sabha elections, there were 23 such constituencies, with anincrease in SC & ST reserved seats in 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
While,the number of assembly seats being contested every year varies depending on thesize of the states where assembly elections are being conducted, the share ofseats in which NOTA polled more than the victory margin has been on thedecline.
In2013, 9% of the total assembly seats contested had NOTA polling more thanvictory margin. The share of such seats in the subsequent years is 5.8%, 6.7% ,7.6%, 6.4%, 6.5% between 2014 -2018. This share is only 4.3% in 2019.
Amongthe various categories of seats, ST reserved seats have a higher share of seatswhere NOTA votes are more than the victory margin. In the case of Assembly elections,the trends have been inconsistent over the years.
In2013, 15.71%  of the ST reservedconstituencies had NOTA polling more than the victory margin while in 2019 itwas down to 10.91%.  Although during theinitial years, the share of these seats among SC reserved constituencies washigher than that of General seats, over the past few years, the numbers are beeninconsistent.
Inthe case of 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the share of theseconstituencies has gone up among the ST reserved seats from 10.2% to 14.29%.The share of such constituencies among SC reserved seats has gone up sincethere were four such SC reserved constituencies in 2019 compared to only one in2014.
Despite
the decline in NOTA as a choice, reserved seats still poll a higher NOTA share
Theone stand out trend of the last 6 years is that NOTA is being chosen by fewerpercentage of voters today compared to 2013. This is true both in the case ofassembly as well as lok sabha elections.
Evenamong the SC and ST reserved seats, the NOTA share has fallen. Despite thisfall, the NOTA vote share in reserved seats is substantially higher than in thegeneral seats.
Withthe exception of 2019 Lok Sabha  elections,  the proportion of seats where NOTA polled morethan the victory margin has also declined over the years. This is also atestament to fewer percentage of voters choosing NOTA.
Thereasons for a higher NOTA share in SC and ST constituencies are not clearlyknown but as observed in an earlier
story on Factly, based on various news reports , there areinstances where there have been open calls by caste based groups not to votefor the reserved candidates and in cases of ST reserved constituencies, non-tribalsnot preferring to vote for tribal candidates.