More votes don’t always mean more seats: Read how RJD winning just 25 seats with highest vote share in Bihar is not evidence of ‘Vote Chori’

NDA has returned to power with a landslide victory in Bihar, with the alliance winning 202 out of 243 seats. The opposition Mahagathbandhan, on the other hand, won just 35 seats, with Congress reducing to seats. Rashtriya Janata Dal managed to win 25 seats. While there is a huge difference in seats won by the two alliances, the vote share numbers tell a different story. As per the results, RJD had the highest vote share at 23%, as the party secured 1,15,46,055 votes. Next was BJP with 20% share and 1,00,81,143 votes, and JD(U) won 96,67,118 votes, a 19.25% share. This ‘discrepancy’ has made some people to question how RJD won 25 seats despite winning the highest number of votes. Some of them also alleged that this is ‘vote chori’, that RJD should have won based on vote share. Suraj G Naik of Congress Sevadak called it “pure #VoteChori in Bihar, not victory”, asking people to make him understand the issue. Someone please make me understand how on earth is this possible – RJD – 18 million votes – 25 seats BJP – 9.6 million votes – 91 seats JDU – 9 million votes – 83 seats "This is pure #VoteChori in Bihar , not victory" pic.twitter.com/tOB39nFAFp— Suraj G Naik (@yoursurajnaik) November 14, 2025 Another person called it ‘vote chor’, ‘gaddi chor’. RJD- 1.8 करोड़ वोट – 25 सीट BJP – 96 लाख वोट – 91 सीट JDU- 90 लाख वोट – 83 सीट “ये चोरी है, जीत नहीं ”वोट चोर, गद्दी छोड़— Sandeep Singh (@ActivistSandeep) November 15, 2025 Similar posts were made by many ther social media users. Some called it manipulation of numbers by the Election Commission, while others asked to explain the’magic/mystery’. Gems of Election Commission Vote share RJD: 23.07 %BJP: 21.92 %JDU: 18.51 %Seats BJP: 84JDU: 76RJD: 35Party with maximum vote share gets the least number of seats…in the Mother of Democracy.#BiharElection2025 pic.twitter.com/djyroj6oHL— D (@Deb_livnletliv) November 14, 2025 When the vote share stayed the same, how did the seats suddenly #skyrocket? Is this public support or political engineering?#GlobeTrotterEvent #BiharElection2025 #BirsaMunda #SanatanDharma pic.twitter.com/9YrR6NdkPM— Bole Bharat (@bole_bharat) November 15, 2025 ये कौन सा गणित है कोई समझाएगा? वोट सबसे ज़्यादा RJD को और सीटें सबसे कम! Vote share RJD: 23.08 % BJP: 21.21 % JDU: 18.96 % Seats RJD: 28 BJP: 90 JDU: 81 मतलब चुनाव गणित का खेल है वोट का नहीं#BiharElection2025 #ElectionUpdates #NitishKumar #VoteChori #Lalu… pic.twitter.com/R8Y10y4ENz— Kashish (@Kkashish_k) November 14, 2025 वोट और सीटों का ग़ज़ब खेला !वोट सबसे ज़्यादा RJD को और सीटें सबसे कम!Vote share RJD: 23.07 %BJP: 21.92 %JDU: 18.51 %Seats RJD: 35BJP: 84JDU: 76#BiharElection2025 pic.twitter.com/TDI7wMwAdS— Bhagat Ram (@bhagatram2020) November 14, 2025 However, despite sounding confusing at first glance, there is no foul play in the results, and this is how India’s election system has been working since the adoption of parliamentary democracy. Two factors are important in terms of Indian elections, first is, results depend on the numbers in individual constituencies, and India has First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) system. The Election Commission website has detailed results of all the constituencies, where the votes secured by each candidate in every constituency can be seen. In each constituency, the candidate that won the higher number of votes won the election. The winning margin does not matter, it can be 1 or 1 lakh, the result is same, candidate with higher votes wins. As most seats in India see multi-cornered fights with several candidates, the winning candidate generally gets around 30-35% of the vote. There is no requirement of 50 % + 1, and there is no proportional adjustment afterwards, which is followed in some other countries. The total votes a party gets across the entire state matter far less than how efficiently those votes are distributed across the constituencies the party actually contests. This is why a party (or alliance) can poll fewer total votes than its rival yet win many more seats, or vice-versa. The phenomenon is not unique to India, it happens regularly in the UK, Canada, and every other country that uses FPTP. However, multi-party competition and seat-sharing alliances make the distortions especially visible in Indian state elections. In most western countries, there are only 3-4 major countries, therefore this phenomenon is less visible. The reason why RJD polled more votes is that they contested in far more seats. Even through they didn’t win most of the seats, they got substantial number of votes in those constituencies, hiking up the total vote number for the party. While RJD contested in 143 seats, BJP and JD(U) contested in 101 seats each. This means, votes of 42 additional seats were added to RJD’s total vote, making a direct comparison with BJP or JD(U) in terms of total vote meaningless. An analysis of average votes per seats makes it clear, as it shows that average vote per seat of BJP and JD(U) are mu