Synergic Effect on Election: Evidence from Nepal's By-elections, 2019

Does the synergic effect work on politics, especially in elections? This article aims to seek to answer this question. The Communist Party of Nepal, Unified Marxist and Leninist (CPN-UML) and Communist Party of Nepal, Maoist Center (CPN-MC) separately contested election fray in 2017. These two parties merged with each other in 2018 and formed a new Nepal Communist Party (NCP). The unified NCP participated in by-elections that held in 2019. Could NCP produce a synergic effect in by-elections 2019? This is another point on which this article tries to focus on. This article is based on the facts of two elections published by the Election Commission. By-elections were held to fill 52 vacant posts. These posts were related to members of federal and provincial parliament, chiefs and deputy-chiefs of local levels, and chairs of ward committees. Unified NCP did not field its candidates in the two constituencies. Therefore, this article has analyzed the results of 50 constituencies. This study concluded that no synergic effect could be produced by the 2019's elections.