Emerging patterns

For all the pre-election predictions that the PTI would be in the best position to form the next government, the scale of the party’s victory has taken most people by surprise. According to the latest counts, the PTI will have 114 seats in the National Assembly, putting it on track to secure an outright majority with the help of a few independents and coalition partners. Most shocking has been its sweep of Karachi, where the party won 12 of the 21 National Assembly seats. While this has been explained by a national wave of popularity for the PTI, for the MQM-P to suffer such a calamitous drop in its share of the vote needs some explaining. This is surely due to the challenges the party has faced, from being hobbled by other pre-poll challenges to continuous infighting within the party itself. Even then, it is notable that results from Karachi took longer to be announced than the rest of the country and that allegations of rigging have been strongest there. The MQM-P was not the only party to suffer, with the PPP losing in strongholds like Lyari. In Punjab, the biggest surprise came when many of the controversial ‘electables’ who left the PML-N to either join the PTI or run as independents ended up losing. In fact, the results in Punjab overall matched those of opinion polls before the election and the PML-N could still be in a position to form the next provincial government.

What is most disturbing about the pattern of election results seen so far is the decisive role played by extremist parties like the TLP. Even though the party did not win a single National Assembly seat, in 14 constituencies the total votes it received were greater than the PTI’s margin of victory over the PML-N. In Karachi, too, extremist parties and new entrants like the Pak Sarzameen Party were not able to win National Assembly seats but did eat into the vote bank of established parties and pad the PTI’s margin of victory. The TLP’s total vote was equal to that of the more mainstream religious parties of the MMA. This will give the party outsized influence as other parties now realise they have a vote bank that needs to be tapped into. It would of course be premature to read too much into the election results when most political parties are still complaining about rigging. But some of the trends that have been seen should give us cause for concern.