Governments have always been formed on pluralities, not majorities, even as voter mobilisation has steadily risen to some of the highest levels in the country
Ex-Fatorda MLA Damodar Naik, president of the Goa BJP, is the first president in the history of his party to declare that in 2027, he aims at 51% total vote share and a real majority. This is consistent with Goa BJP’s long-term strategy to stay in power till 2037 – a year often mentioned by the CM of Goa as his “total development” target.
To check Naik’s aim, I had to perform a mathematical analysis of the assembly elections since 1967. These elections have always drawn attention for their volatility, shifting alliances and sudden swings of fortune. Yet beneath the surface drama lies a consistent statistical pattern that has shaped every government since 1967. For more than five decades, no party in Goa has ever commanded an outright majority of the votes polled statewide.
Governments have always been formed on pluralities, not majorities, even as voter mobilisation has steadily risen to some of the highest levels in the country. Looking at this record through objective indices and official data provides a clear window into how Goa’s democracy has functioned from 1967 through 2022, and what kind of competitive structure frames the election that will come in 2027.
The figures and indices presented here are drawn from official constituency-wise results of the Election Commission of India, aggregated to the state level for each Assembly election from 1967 to 2022. Goa’s elections reveal a pattern that is remarkably consistent and yet often overlooked.
Over thirteen contests between 1967 and 2022, no single party that went on to form the government ever crossed the halfway mark of the votes polled statewide. The ceiling has remained around 40%: the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party in the late 1960s, the Congress in the 1980s and 1990s, and the Bharatiya Janata Party in the 2000s and 2010s have all governed at different times, but always on a plurality rather than a majority of the popular vote. The peak came in 1989 when the Congress secured about 40.5% of the vote; in most other years, the figure hovered between 32% and 39%.
Political scientists measure such outcomes using indices that translate raw percentages into structural indicators of the party system. The Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI), adapted from economics, shows whether votes are concentrated in a few hands or spread widely. Turning this around yields a fragmentation index, which rises as more parties enter the fray. The effective number of parties based on votes (ENP) reads like a headcount of serious contenders: a value near three signals a triangular contest, a value near five points to a crowded field.
Another lens is the Opposition Unity Index (OUI), which asks what share of non-government votes rallied behind the single largest challenger. High values mean the opposition voted together, low values mean it was dispersed. Applied to Goa, these measures map a clear trajectory. In 1967, in the second assembly election after liberation, the mobilisation of voters reached about 68%, and the MGP topped the poll with a 40.4% share, translating to effective support from just under 28% of all registered voters. The opposition was divided between factions of the United Goans, independents and smaller parties, but the OUI still stood at a relatively high 0.64, showing that most anti-MGP votes concentrated with one main challenger.
By 1989, the OUI touched its series high of 0.65 as Congress and MGP squared off in a nearly bipolar race, and the top two together accounted for nearly 80% of the vote. In these decades, the ENP hovered around three, consistent with a system dominated by two principal parties and a third stream of independents.
The picture changed sharply in the 1990s. In 1994, the OUI fell to 0.36, the lowest in the entire series, as the anti-Congress vote splintered across MGP, BJP, UGDP, independents and others. The fragmentation index crossed 0.76, and the effective number of parties rose above four. Two-party concentration dropped below 60%. This was the inflection point when Goa’s party system shifted from bipolar to multipolar. That structure has persisted.
In 2002, Congress led the popular vote with 38.4%, but the BJP formed the government with 35.6%, a result made possible by the dispersal of the opposition vote across multiple smaller parties. In 2007, 2012, and 2017, the ENP remained near four, and by 2022, it climbed to about five, confirming that five parties or blocs were relevant in terms of votes. The fragmentation index reached a historic high of 0.80 that year, the OUI fell again to one-third, and the top two parties together commanded less than 57% of the statewide vote.
Voter mobilisation, meanwhile, was close to 80%, which meant the BJP’s effective support from the total electorate was about 26.5% – almost identical in scale to the MGP’s support base half a century earlier in 1967. The correlations are strong and statistically precise. Opposition unity and fragmentation move almost perfectly in opposite directions (correlation coefficient about minus 0.92). Years with higher unity, like 1989, are associated with closer margins of victory. Years with high fragmentation, like 1994 and 2022, coincide with wider gaps between the first and second parties, even though the winners themselves polled less than 40% of votes.
The full series from 1967 to 2022 shows that Goa’s political history is not one of sweeping mandates but of finely balanced pluralities in an environment of high mobilisation and increasing fragmentation. Every government since 1967 has been anchored in less than half the votes polled, often closer to one-third. The shift from the relatively bipolar contests of the MGP-Congress decades to the multi-polar battles of recent years is captured precisely by the indices of fragmentation and unity. These findings do not point towards any particular outcome in 2027, but they define the structural conditions within which that election will take place.
(Dr Nandkumar M Kamat, who has a doctorate in microbiology, is a scientist and science writer.)
