The BJP-Janata Dal United combine may have won the Bihar election but its vote share in the state has dropped by 10.5 percentage points compared to the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, Election Commission figures show.

In contrast, the combined tally of the Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Congress shows a gain of 9.5 per cent votes over the 2019 figure. This does not include the 5.5 per cent votes their Mahagathbandhan partners — the Left parties — won from 29 Assembly seats this time.

According to the final results, the NDA has won 125 of Bihar’s 243 seats, narrowly surpassing the majority mark of 122, while the Opposition RJD-Congress-Left alliance has bagged 110 seats.

“While there’s no established formula to predict whether (and by how much) a party’s seat tally would increase or decrease with a rise or fall in its vote share, the vote percentage does indicate a party’s popularity among the voters,” a senior JDU leader told The Telegraph on the condition of anonymity.

The BJP and the JDU had together bagged around 45.4 per cent of the votes in the 2019 general election, sharing 33 of Bihar’s 40 Lok Sabha seats between them. Six seats had gone to their junior partner, the Lok Janshakti Party, which broke away from the alliance in Bihar ahead of the Assembly polls.

This time the BJP and the JDU together mustered just 34.9 per cent of the votes, marking a loss of around 10.5 per cent of the total votes.

The BJP won 19.5 per cent of the votes, bagging 74 seats. Its vote share in last year’s Lok Sabha elections was 23.6, indicating a fall of 4.1 percentage points this time.

Chief minister Nitish Kumar’s JDU has garnered 15.4 per cent of the votes and 43 Assembly seats. This represents a fall of 6.4 percentage points from the 21.8 per cent votes it had received in the general election.

The two allies’ combined polling percentage shows a drop even when compared with the 2015 Assembly elections, when they were on opposite sides. The BJP then headed the NDA while the JDU led a Grand Alliance with the RJD and the Congress.

In 2015, the BJP had won 24.4 per cent of the votes, which indicates it has lost almost 5 per cent of the total votes this time. The JDU had secured 16.8 per cent of the votes in 2015, which means its share has dropped by 1.4 percentage points.

The RJD and the Congress have won 23.1 per cent and 9.5 per cent of the votes, respectively, against the 15.4 per cent and 7.7 per cent they had secured in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. This adds up to a combined gain of 9.5 per cent of the votes.

Individually, the RJD has gained 7.7 per cent of the total votes and the Congress, 1.8 per cent.