87% winners in Assam polls got votes above 50%, shows ADR study

📌 Summary:

• An Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) analysis of the recent Assam Assembly elections found that about 87% (110 of 126 winners) polled 50% or more of the total votes cast in their constituency, while 13% (16 winners) won with less than 50%
• Winners polled an average of 58.11% of total votes cast, up from an average of 54.08% in 2021
• On criminal backgrounds: 16 of 21 winners (76%) with declared criminal cases won with a vote share of 50% or above, as did 94 of 105 winners (90%) with clean backgrounds; 14 of the 21 winners with criminal cases defeated a runner-up with a clean background
• On margins: only two winners won by a margin of under 3,000 votes, while four winners had a victory margin of more than 50%
• Among women candidates, Niso Terangpi (BJP) from Diphu won with the highest vote share at 62.95%
• Of 63 re-elected winners, none won with under 40% vote share and 54 of them (86%) crossed a 50% vote share
• NOTA: of the 2,16,64,898 votes polled in the 2026 Assam Assembly elections, 2,66,962 (1.23%) were cast for NOTA

🎯 UPSC Relevance: GS2 Polity — electoral representativeness, the first-past-the-post system, the criminalisation of politics, and the role of civil-society election watchdogs.

📝 Prelims Facts:

• The Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) is an election-watchdog NGO that analyses candidate affidavits and electoral data
• About 87% of Assam 2026 winners polled 50% or more of votes; the average winning vote share was 58.11% (up from 54.08% in 2021)
• The NOTA share in the 2026 Assam elections was 1.23% (2,66,962 of 2,16,64,898 votes)
• The highest women's vote share was Niso Terangpi (BJP, Diphu) at 62.95%

🔑 Key Term: NOTA (None Of The Above) — a ballot option, introduced after a 2013 Supreme Court ruling, that allows voters to formally reject all contesting candidates.