Election Data Methodology

All data in this explorer originates from the following official sources:

• Election Commission of India (ECI) — primary source for constituency-level results, candidate tallies, valid votes, NOTA counts, and vote share for both Assembly (2021) and Parliamentary (2024) elections. Records are available at results.eci.gov.in.
• Chief Electoral Officer, West Bengal (CEO WB) — state-level authority for turnout figures, polling-station rolls, electoral rolls, and booth-level data where officially published. Available at ceowestbengal.nic.in.
• Census of India 2011 — used for district-level demographic context only (population, literacy, SC/ST share, urban percentage).
• Delimitation Commission of India — used to verify constituency names, numbers, and reserved (SC/ST/General) status.

Every constituency record carries a source name, source URL, source type (official / verified), and a last-verified date, viewable in the Map Explorer sidebar under the "Sources" tab. Full source listing is at Data Sources.

Where multiple sources disagree, the following priority order is applied:

1. ECI official results portal — always takes precedence for vote counts and results.
2. CEO West Bengal publications — for turnout and booth data not available from ECI directly.
3. Census / Delimitation records — for contextual and boundary data only.

Aggregator sites, news archives, and Wikipedia are never used as data sources. They may be used to cross-check for errors, but the ECI or CEO record always prevails.

We do not estimate, interpolate, or fabricate values that are not present in verified official sources. Where a value is unavailable, the interface displays "Unavailable" rather than a guess or model estimate.

This is especially important for:

• Booth-level votes (not all booths are published)
• Turnout by polling station (available only where CEO has published them)
• Demographic breakdowns within constituencies (not in the public electoral dataset)

The UI will always communicate when data is unavailable rather than hiding the gap.

Booth-level data (polling station-level vote counts) is published unevenly for West Bengal. Some assembly segments have booth-wise results available from the CEO; many do not. We only display booth data that has been explicitly verified from an official source.

When booth records exist for a constituency, they appear under the Booths tab in the detail sidebar as a structured table with per-booth votes and turnout. If no verified booth data is available, the following message is displayed:

If verified booth boundary GeoJSON becomes available in the future, the interface is designed to accept it without changes to the data model.

This application uses constituency centroid markers as placeholder geometry. Each marker represents the approximate geographic center of a constituency, not its actual boundary. The centroid markers are clearly labeled as placeholder geometry on the map interface.

The application is built to accept official GeoJSON boundary files in the future:

• Assembly constituency GeoJSON (294 polygons)
• Parliamentary constituency GeoJSON (42 polygons)
• Polling station / booth GeoJSON (if officially published)

Placeholder geometry must never be cited or used as authoritative boundary data.

This explorer uses a consistent party color system for visual identification. Colors are chosen to be distinct and visually accessible. Party colors are used only for data visualization and do not imply any political endorsement.

• All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) — green
• Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) — saffron / amber
• Indian National Congress (INC) — blue
• Communist Party of India (Marxist) — CPI(M) — red
• Independent (IND) — grey
• Other parties — muted purple

Each constituency record carries an individual last_verified_date field which is stored and displayed in the Sources tab of the detail sidebar. The dataset as a whole is reviewed when ECI publishes corrections, revised vote counts, or when new official data releases become available.

• Verified data: The dataset has been populated from official Election Commission of India records, covering all 294 Assembly and 42 Lok Sabha constituencies.
• Census data is from 2011: Demographic context uses Census 2011. The 2021 census data is not yet fully available.
• Boundaries are placeholder: Map markers represent centroids, not actual constituency polygons.
• Booth data: Not yet integrated. UI is ready to display booth data when loaded.
• No real-time updates: This explorer does not pull live data from ECI. Data is a fixed snapshot.

Spotted an error? Please cite the official ECI page for the affected constituency and provide the discrepancy. Correction requests are treated with the same scrutiny as the original data ingestion — we will only update records when we can verify the correction from an official source.