The Vote Didis: Why Women Vote More In Bihar Elections?

The first phase of the 2025 Bihar Assembly elections recorded an unprecedented voter turnout of 64.66 per cent across 121 constituencies—the highest in the state’s history—stunning analysts who had anticipated signs of “voter fatigue”. The previous record of 62.57 per cent was set during the 2000 Assembly elections, while for the Lok Sabha, Bihar had registered a maximum turnout of 64.6 per cent in 1998. Districts such as Muzaffarpur (70.96 per cent), Samastipur (70.63 per cent), Saharsa (66.84 per cent) and Khagaria (66.36 per cent) reflected exceptional participation in the first phase. Patna, typically lagging, also reached 57.93 per cent, bolstered by the administration’s voter outreach campaign, Mission 60 percent.

Indeed, this extraordinary turnout carries a striking political message for both the incumbent and the challengers, but more profoundly, it signifies a gender-feminist surge in Bihar’s democratic landscape. The state has around 3.50 crore women voters out of a total electorate of 7.43 crore. Despite the challenges of patriarchy and low representation in party nominations, women have consistently outvoted men in recent elections.

In 2020, female turnout stood at 59.7 per cent compared to 54.6 per cent for men, while in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, it was 59.4 per cent versus 53.28 per cent. These figures confirm that women are the single most decisive voting bloc in Bihar.

Some may legitimately attribute the surge in participation in the first phase of 2025 to rising voter awareness around issues of rozgar (employment) and palayan (migration). Yet, in a fundamental sense, it appears to have been led by women, reflecting the long-term impact of Nitish Kumar’s women-centred welfare architecture—from improved governance and the Mukhyamantri Mahila Rozgar Yojana, known as the Dashazari Yojana, to 50 per cent reservation for women in Panchayati Raj Institutions, horizontal job reservations for women and the empowerment of 1.14 million Jeevika self-help groups. Nearly 90,000 Jeevika Didis (female volunteers) are deployed for election supervision, consolidating women’s participation and translating welfare engagement into active political citizenship.

Also, youth voters—many of them women—have emerged as a vital element of aspirational Bihar. Those aged 18-29 appear to have contributed substantially to the Phase 1 turnout, drawn by employment-linked promises, local developmental initiatives and an evolving pan-Bihari identity. Bihar’s high participation also reflects voter confidence in the institutional process of electoral management in a region notorious for booth capturing and electoral violence in the past. The Election Commission’s capping of 1,200 voters per booth, full live webcasting of polling, facilitation for elderly citizens, Persons with Disabilities (PwDs) and service electors also enhanced voter efficacy by reducing transaction costs and increasing trust in the electoral process.

Conventional interpretations of Indian voting behaviour often equate high turnout with anti-incumbency. Yet experience across states demonstrates that this association is inconsistent. Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and even national elections show that higher participation does not automatically disadvantage incumbents. In fact, incumbents who combine welfare delivery, governance credibility and mobilisation can benefit from high turnout. Though it’s not predictive of final results, Bihar’s 2025 Phase I turnout suggest precisely this dynamic: the Nitish Kumar-led government, through a “maternal welfare state” model and consistent developmental governance, has converted electoral participation into a pro-incumbency advantage. Far from signalling dissatisfaction or voter disaffection, the turnout indicates a consolidation of political legitimacy and voter trust.

Comparable experiences aboard also challenge the anti-incumbency-turnout thesis. In South Africa, high turnout throughout the 2000s consolidated the African National Congress’s dominance, built on social protection and liberation-era legitimacy. In the United States, the record turnout of 66.8 per cent was bipartisan; both sides mobilised intensely, showing that turnout measures political intensity rather than direction. High participation, in short, may be a symptom of democratic vitality, not necessarily of regime change.

Political behaviour theory supports this interpretation. Voter efficacy models, refined by political scientist John Aldrich (1993), argue that participation rises when citizens perceive elections as fair, credible, accessible and also resulting into expected benefits. Mobilisation models, as emphasised by Rosenstone and Hansen (1993), suggest that parties, candidates and organisations increase turnout by lowering participation costs through logistic support, persuasion and emotional engagement. Expressive and group-identity models, articulated by Sidney Verba and Norman Nie (1972) in their influential book Participation in America, show that voters act to signal belonging to communities, caste, gender, or ideology, even if individual votes are unlikely to determine outcomes. Bihar’s women, youth and marginalised voters exemplify this behaviour: their participation is both expressive and strategic, rooted in identification with a welfare-led state rather than protest against it. Taken together, the 2025 Bihar elections are not routine. Rather, they exhibit characteristics that scholars classify as a ‘critical election’, but with a distinctive Bihari template; one consolidating women’s agency, lower-caste empowerment, developmental consociationalism (power-sharing arrangements), while simultaneously restructuring social cleavages and fuelling demands for next-generation economic reforms.

Prashant Kishor’s Jan Suraj Party’s grassroots initiative, the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD)-led Mahagathbandhan cadre, and the BJP’s extensive migrant voters outreach programmes seem to have collectively heightened visibility and energised sections of the electorate that might otherwise have remained passive. While the organisational reach of these efforts varies across constituencies, their presence has intensified engagement and added complexity to the democratic exercise in Bihar.

The final phase of voting is scheduled for November 11, but the first phase has already revealed the heightened stakes of Bihar’s democratic contest. The historic turnout—driven in no small measure by Jeevika Didis and other historically marginalised, once underrepresented groups—signals a deepening of democratic maturity. This evolving dynamic may reshape not only the immediate electoral balance but also potentially alter patriarchal political culture in the state. The 2025 elections thus stand as a vivid demonstration of democratic vitality—whatever the eventual outcome, the women of Bihar have already emerged as its true winners.

(Views expressed are personal)

Ashwani Kumar is a poet, political scientist and the author of Community Warriors: State, Peasants and Caste Armies in Bihar.

This story appeared in print as The Vote Didis in Outlook’s November 21 issue Solitude Of Power, in which we trace Bihar’s enduring political grammar, where caste equations remain constant, alliances shift like sand, and one man’s survival instinct continues to shape the state’s destiny.