The political landscape in Bangladesh is evolving by the hour. The bright young politician Osman Hadi’s assassination has opened wormholes. Tarique Rahman’s homecoming has given BNP their much-needed boost as the forerunner.
However, the Jamaat-NCP coalition has taken the front seat for now, with some of NCP’s senior leadership leaving the camp citing ideological reasons. What does it all mean in terms of electoral outcomes?
At the end of the day, the election is about winning seats. Bangladesh’s parliament is decided based on first past the post system. That means whichever party (or its coalition) wins more than 150 seats, will be asked to form the government.
In this system, winning enough votes is not enough. The parties need to win enough seats. Winning 45% of the votes may not necessarily translate to winning a majority of the seats in the parliament.
However, the parties are also accounting for the number of upper house seats that they will get if there is a proportional representation. As such, maximizing aggregate vote is also an active consideration.
Innovision’s Peoples Election Pulse Survey Round 2 in September 2025 projected that among the revealed and decided voters, BNP is projected to get 41.30% vote, Jamaat is projected to get 30.30% vote, NCP is projected to get 4.10% vote. Parties other than Awami League have insignificant percentage share of votes to affect the aggregate vote share.
In this scenario, if Jamaat and NCP votes remain static, and if they form a coalition, then their votes are expected to add up to 34.40%.
IRI’s survey shows that the gap might even be lower. In the IRI survey, among all votes (revealed, unrevealed, decided, and undecided) BNP has 30% votes, Jamaat has 26%, and NCP has 6% votes.
This means, if the votes remain unchanged in a coalition, then Jamaat and NCP votes are expected to surpass BNP votes if we take the IRI survey as the basis.
It is likely that this accounting might have influenced the decision even though the spokespersons from both the parties have explained other ideological issues as reasons to form the coalition.
But will the votes add up monotonically in a coalition? If NCP leaders can break into fragments because of ideological differences, is there not a risk that the Jamaat and NCP’s voters will also break into fragments?
In that case, who comes out as the winner in the coalition and in the election?
In the Innovision survey, respondents were asked which party was their first preference and then asked which party was their second preference. This question was designed to assess two scenarios:
- How the voters who prefer the Awami League to other parties might vote.
- How the voters would respond if a certain party was absent in their constituency.
In the next parliamentary election, the parties will have to vote with their own party symbol even if they are in a coalition. That means, the NCP candidates will vote with NCP’s “shapla koli” symbol in seats where Jamaat will not compete.
So far, as we understand, Jamaat has left 30 seats for the NCP. Will the NCP in these seats get all the Jamaat votes? Also, in the seats where NCP is not competing, will the NCP votes transfer to Jamaat?
As shown in the chart, among the voters whose first preference is Jamaat, 48.9% identifies BNP as their second preference and 14.2% identifies NCP as their second preference.
Among the voters, whose first preference is NCP, 32% identify BNP as their second preference and 35.6% identify Jamaat as their second preference.
Most importantly, among the voters, whose first preference is Awami League, 49.5% identify BNP as their second preference. As Awami League is restricted from participating in this election, BNP is expected to win a large share of the Awami League votes.
Even if these results do not break as they are presented, they show that the votes may not just add up to form the total number of coalition votes. There would be some sort of shifts and the coalition will gain only if the net shift is in favour of the coalition.
It is likely that Jamaat will gain in the seats that NCP is leaving to Jamaat. But it is not as likely that NCP will gain the Jamaat votes in seats that Jamaat is leaving to NCP.
The electoral coalition outcomes can also be presented with game theory. There are two possibilities -- cooperative game and non-cooperative game.
The defection in NCP shows that we will not have a cooperative game. There are independent candidates from NCP who will be contesting. There are also independent candidates from BNP who will be contesting in different constituencies. BNP and Jamaat are both able to change the electoral results based on their bargains.
It is therefore a curious case -- why is Jamaat keen to have NCP in its coalition. The most likely reason is that Jamaat gains not from votes, but from leveraging NCP’s identity as the lead force in the July movement.
This helps Jamaat to craft a new political identity and liberate itself from the shadow of its role during the War of Liberation. Jamaat gains the higher pay-off.
But what about NCP? NCP probably understands that they are not able to have higher pay-off on their own. They want more seats and more power in the next parliament and assume that they cannot achieve that on their own.
This means, neither Jamaat nor the NCP is able to change their expected outcomes without forging the alliance.
For this to work, Jamaat needs to gain more votes by embracing NCP and NCP needs to get more votes by embracing Jamaat.
The challenge here is that both their pay-offs may decline if the voters decide to opt for strategic voting; that is, they do not vote for their first preference. It is a likelihood that both parties must be conscious about.
Md Rubaiyath Sarwar is Managing Director of Innovision Consulting.