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Business News/ Specials / Election Metrics/  2014 sees the second highest sweep index in a general election
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2014 sees the second highest sweep index in a general election

The extent of the state-wide sweeps seen in this year's general election may well be unprecedented

One of the characteristic features of the 2014 general election has been the extent to which parties and alliances have swept certain states. Photo: Hindustan TimesPremium
One of the characteristic features of the 2014 general election has been the extent to which parties and alliances have swept certain states. Photo: Hindustan Times

One of the characteristic features of the 2014 general election has been the extent to which parties and alliances have swept certain states.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), for example, won all 26 and 25 seats in Gujarat and Rajasthan, respectively. The All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) won 37 out of 39 in Tamil Nadu, and the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) won 20 out of 21 in Odisha. While there have been some state-wide sweeps in the past—such as the Congress winning 36 out of 42 in Andhra Pradesh in 2009 and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam-led alliance winning all 39 seats in Tamil Nadu in 2004—the extent of state-wide sweeps we have seen in these elections may well be unprecedented.

In order to test this hypothesis, let’s construct a sweep index. This is broadly based on the Hirschman-Herfindahl Index (HHI) from economic theory, which is used to measure the degree of monopoly in a particular industry. The HHI is defined as the sum of the square of the market share of each firm in the industry.

At one extreme, if one firm has 100% market share, the HHI for the industry is 1. If there are two firms, each with a 50% market share, the HHI is 0.5 (0.25 + 0.25). If there are a large number of firms, each with an infinitesimal market share, the HHI tends to zero.

Let’s use the same concept to determine the degree of sweep in a particular state. Let’s start with the seat share of each alliance in the state and take the sum of squares to arrive at the sweep index for the particular state. We then take the average sweep index across states (after weighing it with the number of seats in each state) to get the national sweep index for a particular year.

For example, the sweep index for 2014 for a state such as Rajasthan, Delhi or Gujarat (where a single party or alliance swept the state) is 1. For a state like Uttar Pradesh, where the NDA (BJP + Apna Dal) got 73 seats, UPA got two and SP got five, the sweep index is calculated as (73/80)^2 + (5/80)^2 + (2/80)^2 to give us 83.72%.

Now, if we want to aggregate the sweep index across Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan (just an illustrative example; we only calculate the index at the state and national levels), we calculate it as (80 x 83.72% + 25 * 100%)/(80 + 25) to give a total of 87.6%. This way, we can calculate the national sweep index of all elections starting from 1952.

Figure 1 shows how the National Sweep Index has changed over the 16 Lok Sabhas. The interesting thing to be noted is that only once in history has the sweep index been higher than the current 73%. It was 76% for the eighth Lok Sabha in 1984.

That year, the aftermath of Indira Gandhi’s assassination led to a Congress sweep. Even in the pre-emergency years, when the Congress was pretty much the only big national party, the sweep index was much lower than it is in 2014. This is perhaps what makes the 2014 elections a rather historic verdict.

It would also be interesting to look at the sweep indices across a few major states. Figures 2 to 13 give the sweep indices of some of the major states over the years.

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Published: 20 May 2014, 11:42 PM IST
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