By Our Reporter
The popularity of major political parties has greatly waned in the last five years. The votes they garnered under the proportional representation (PR) category is a testimony to this.
The CPN-UML although garnered the largest votes under PR category this time, its votes dropped by over 280,000 compared to the 2017 elections. It garnered 2,845,641 PR votes this time while it had received 3,173,494 votes in 2017. When the number of voters has increased this year, the votes received by main parties have fallen, indicating the waning popularity of the big parties. In percentage, the UML got 26.9 % per cent votes while it had garnered
33.25% votes five years ago. Likewise, NC garnered 2,715,225 votes this year against 31, 28, 389 in 2017. Percentage-wise, NC got 25.7% this year while it was 32.7% per cent five years ago. It is said that the majority of the votes received by the Rastriya Swatantra Party this time were NC’s traditional votes as the NC voters did not vote for the party because its candidates were included in the PR category. Had there not been Arzoo Rana and Manju Khand in the NC’s PR list, NC could have garnered more votes than the UML under the PR category, said a professor of Tribhuvan University in the condition of anonymity.
The Maoist Centre was the biggest loser this time as it won only 32 seats from both the FPTP and PR categories this year while it had won 53 seats five years ago. It got only 1,175,684 votes this time while it had received 13,03, 721 votes in 2017. The Maoists’ votes fell to 12.3% from 13.6 in 2017.
It was Rastriya Prajatantra Party that managed to increase the votes to 588,313 from 198,782 votes five years ago.
This year the Rastriya Swatatra Party, the newest party to contest the elections, got significantly high votes, almost equal to the Maoist Centre. It got 11, 30, 344 votes.
Similarly, the traditional Madhes-based parties also lost popular votes with only Janata Samajwadi Party Nepal managing to cross the threshold of 3 per cent this time. Instead, Janamat Party emerged as the popular party in the Tarai.
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