t has become a habit for the people to vote for TRS in every election since 2014. The Congress and the BJP have both been claiming that they are alternatives to the TRS but in the recent municipal elections they failed to match the ruling party. In fact, the TRS got more votes than the two parties together.

In the municipal elections, the TRS got 42.15 per cent vote share, the Congress 21.7 and the BJP got 14.4 per cent vote share. The remaining The remaining 21.75 per cent was shared by rebels and other political parties like the CPM and the CPI.



In the December 2018 Assembly elections, the TRS got 46.9 per cent votes, which fell to 41.29 per cent in the Lok Sabha elections in April last year. In the Assembly elections, the Congress and BJP got 28.4 per cent and 7 per cent vote respectively. By the time of the Lok Sabha elections, the Congress vote percentage went up to 29.48 per cent and the BJP 19.45 per cent.

Between the two elections, the TRS vote share fell by 5.61 percentage points, while those of the Congress and the BJP increased by 1.07 and 12.45 percentage points. In the recent municipal elections, the TRS vote share went up by about 1 per cent, the Congress plunged by about 8 percentage points and the BJP vote share 5 percentage points compared to the Lok Sabha elections. The municipal elections were held for 120 municipalities and 10 municipal corporations, which are basically urban areas, but the voting trend shows the mood of the people.

Senior TRS leaders said that welfare schemes taken by the state government had become the backbone for the ruling party in the elections. He said that the two important schemes, social welfare pensions and Rythu Bandhu, played an important role in the elections. These schemes appear to be more popular than development schemes. People appear to be giving importance to welfare schemes from which they benefit.