Vote Shifting Patterns: Comparative Cases from the Constituent Assembly Elections in Nepal

As the literature on electoral politics reveals, vote shifting is one of the most politically sensitive issues. This article focuses on the vote shifting pattern of electoral politics of Nepal. It is based on the secondary data from the first and the next Constituent Assembly (CA) elections held in 2008 and 2013 respectively, published by the Election Commission of Nepal. It aligns with the mixed of quantitative and qualitative approaches. It is limited to the data that belong to the first-past-the-post (FPTP) electoral system covering 240 constituencies and party-wise vote shifting pattern. The results show that a higher vote shifting pattern was marked in the 2013 CA election in comparison to the 2008 CA election. The results also show that the Nepalese voters show a cyclic tendency towards electing a new political power at the cost of the traditional one(s) as their political aspirations are not achieved.