Quixplained: Why counting of votes was slow in Bihar elections

Bihar election results 2020: The Election Commission declared late night Tuesday that the NDA alliance had won the election. However, counting of votes was unusually slow by today's standards. Here's why

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The Bihar Assembly Election Results were declared late Tuesday night.

On Tuesday, counting of votes for the Bihar election took unusually long by today’s standards. This is because of the precautions the Election Commission took amid the Covid-19 pandemic. In fact, the poll body said in a press conference during the day that counting could continue well into the night. We saw a similar situation in the recently-concluded US presidential election.

Experts usually wait for the poll panel to count at least half the votes to call an election. In case of a close election with wafer-thin margins, as this Bihar election turned out to be, the wait is longer.

Bihar election results: By 5.30 pm, the EC had counted roughly 2.7 crore (or two-third) of the total 4.11 crore votes polled. Under normal circumstances, we would have had clear winning leads by now and news channels would have called the election.

Bihar election results: More polling stations means more Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs). More EVMs means a longer wait for the final result. It is this which is causing counting to be slower than usual, with only two-third of the votes counted till 5.30 pm

Bihar election results: To ensure social distancing norms put in place due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Election Commission had increased the number of polling stations from nearly 65,000 in the 2015 assembly polls to 1.06 lakh.

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