Election Results 2025: BJP, JDU Bihar Clean Sweep Powered By Caste Matrix Boost, Muslim + Yadav Push

The BJP and Janata Dal United are set to record a dominant win over the opposition in the Bihar election, thumping Tejashwi Yadav's Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Congress by over 160 seats.

One of the bedrocks of this win will be the strong showing among Extremely and Other Backward Castes, as well as Scheduled Castes and Tribes. And another, critical, platform will be the Muslim + Yadav community that appears to have pivoted from the Mahagathbandhan.

Going into Friday's counting of votes, two exit polls - Axis My India and Matrize - said the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance would sweep the former and the Mahagathbandhan the latter.

The Axis My India figures said the NDA would get 49 per cent of votes from SC communities, 56 per cent from STs, 58 per cent from EBCs, and 63 per cent from OBCs.

RECAP | Caste Matrix To Favour BJP-Led Alliance In Bihar Election: 2 Exit Polls

Matrize put 51 per cent of OBC voters and 49 per cent of SC voters in the NDA's camp.

Both put 78 per cent of the Muslim votes in the Mahagathbandhan's pocket.

As counting progressed, it turned out the caste matrix did favour the NDA.

The Kurmi+Koeri community, for example, from which Chief Minister Nitish Kumar hails, voted, unsurprisingly, for the NDA by 65.7 per cent to 31.9 per cent.

The Nishad (or Mallah) community - which accounts for 2.6 per cent of Bihar's population and which the opposition had hoped to tap into, via VIP leader Mukesh Sahani - had apparently spurned that advance. Over 60 per cent had voted for candidates put up by the NDA.

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The Kushwaha clan also seemed to have voted overwhelmingly for the NDA, which was leading in 41 constituencies where voters from that community have influence. By contrast, the opposition was leading in nine, representing a massive drop of 19 seats from the last election.

Unsurprisingly the Paswan community votes also seem to have run away from the Mahagathbandhan, underlining the stellar showing by Chirag Paswan's Lok Janshakti Party; the LJP was allotted 28 seats - it wanted 40 - and is on course to win 22 of them. The NDA picked up nearly 82 per cent of these votes.

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Both the EBC and OBC votes were similarly headed. The NDA was on course to get over 63 per cent of the latter and 74 per cent from SCs, eclipsing even the most optimistic predictions.

The Muslim + Yadav matrix, however, did not favour the Mahagathbandhan.

In fact, the NDA could end up pocketing over 65 per cent of these votes.

That dramatic switch is, perhaps, exemplified by the tight race in Raghopur, RJD boss Lalu Yadav's bastion, which has voted for him, his wife Rabri Devi, or son Tejashwi Yadav in almost every election since 1995. The exception was 2010, when Satish Kumar beat Rabri Devi.

The margin of the BJP-JDU's victory to come means, of course, it wasn't just voters from the above communities that picked Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Nitish Kumar.

It was also the Muslim votes, a bank that has historically gone with Lalu Yadav and the RJD suddenly switched tack, even with Asaduddin Owaisi's AIMIM in play, and backed Nitish Kumar and his ally, the BJP. Matrize said the RJD would get 78 per cent of the Muslim votes.

The Caste Factor in Bihar

Caste is always going to be a key factor in any Bihar election, particularly after the October 2023 survey confirmed over 60 per cent of the state's 13 crore+ population comes from a marginalised community and nearly 85 per cent belong to a BC, EBC, Scheduled Class or Scheduled Tribe.

RECAP | Bihar Caste Survey: 27% Backward Classes, 36% Extremely Backward Classes

Specifically, an estimated 36 per cent was found to be from an extremely backward class, 27.1 per cent from a backward class, 19.7 per cent from a Scheduled Caste, and 1.7 per cent from a Scheduled Tribe. The general category, including so-called upper castes, were 15.5 per cent.

Data from a state-wide caste survey carried out before the 2024 Lok Sabha election.

An acknowledgment of those numbers was evident when each side was discussing candidates, with political analysts noting that ticket distribution was based on 'hard-nosed caste arithmetic'.

Pre-poll analysis of those candidates revealed that each side, more or less, matched the other in giving tickets to politicians from various castes and communities, although the Mahagathbandhan focused more on maximising reach among the Yadav community.

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