No state for women? 9 out of every 10 female candidates lost the 2026 race
Five states. 1,019 women in the race. Only 78 won.
More than a thousand women contested the Assembly polls in Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Kerala, Puducherry, and Assam. But only 78 of those 1,019 women won — a combined strike rate of less than eight per cent.
The ones who bucked the trend
Two states stood apart. Women candidates in Kerala and Assam recorded a strike rate of 12 per cent, meaning roughly one in every eight women who contested actually won.
In Kerala, 11 women won from 92 candidates, its strike rate up from 11 per cent in 2021 to 12 per cent in 2026. Assam showed the clearest improvement, with seven women winning out of 60 candidates and the strike rate rising from eight per cent in 2021 to 12 per cent in 2026.
Most women elected
West Bengal had the highest number of women winners, 37, among the five states. But it also had one of the biggest pools of women candidates, with 385 in the fray.
The result was a strike rate of just 10 per cent. That marks a sharp drop from 2021, when 40 out of 240 women candidates won. More women contested in 2026, but fewer won.
Big on numbers, short on results
Tamil Nadu fielded the largest number of women in 2026, with 442 candidates in the race. But only 23 won, leaving the state with a strike rate of only five per cent, the second lowest among the five states. That was still an improvement from 2021, when 12 women won, and the strike rate stood at just three per cent.
Legislature without women
Puducherry delivered the bleakest outcome of the 2026 elections. Forty women contested. Not one won. The Union Territory ended up with an all-male Assembly and a strike rate of zero. In 2021, Puducherry managed to elect one woman. In 2026, even that disappeared.