The BJP, which had 51 per cent vote share in 2019, has registered 44 per cent till noon on counting day this time. The JD(S), which had registered 10 per cent of the votes while contesting seven seats in 2019 in an alliance with the Congress, has registered eight per cent votes so far while contesting three seats in alliance with the BJP this time.

As many as nine Lok Sabha seats in Karnataka are witnessing a close fight between the Congress and the BJP-JD(S) alliance, including the Gulbarga seat represented by the family of Congress national president Mallikarjun Kharge.

Clear trends were being witnessed in only 12 seats, where candidates had established clear leads in the range of one lakh votes.

The candidates with the biggest margin of more than 2 lakh votes were JD(S) leader and former chief minister H D Kumaraswamy in Mandya, BJP’s Tejasvi Surya in Bangalore South, and Vishweshwar Hedge Kaggeri of the BJP in Uttara Kannada.

The BJP also looked poised to win eight of the nine seats with margins currently in the range of 1 lakh.

These seats are that of B Y Raghavendra in Shimoga, Yaduveer Wodeyar in Mysore, Brajesh Chouta in Dakshina Kannada, Srinivas Poojary in Udupi Chikmagalur, Pralhad Joshi in Dharwad, V Somanna in Tumkur, Dr C N Manjunath in Bangalore Rural, and Shobha Karandlaje in Bangalore North.

One of the biggest surprises so far for the BJP has been the almost guaranteed win for Manjunath, the son-in-law of JD(S) leader and former prime minister H D Deve Gowda, from Bengaluru Rural. Manjunath, who was fielded as a BJP candidate, is poised to end the 10-year reign in the constituency of state Congress chief D K Shivakumar’s brother D K Suresh.

The Congress has a big lead, of nearly 1 lakh, in only one seat – Bidar, where minister Eshwar Khandre’s son Sagar Khandre is in the fray against BJP MP Bhagwant Khuba.

The Congress party has more narrow leads – less than 40,000 votes – in five seats, including Gulbarga, where Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge’s son-in-law Radhakrishna Doddamani has a lead of merely 4,800 votes over the BJP MP Umesh Jadhav.

The Congress also held a narrow lead of 30,000 votes in Hassan, where rape-accused JD(S) MP candidate Prajwal Revanna is trailing the Congress’s Shreyas Patel. It also has a surprise lead in the Chikodi seat, where minister Satish Jarkiholi’s daughter Priyanka is battling three-time BJP MP Annasaheb Jolle.

Other seats where the Congress has narrow leads are in the economically backward Raichur, Koppal, and Davangere seats. The BJP has narrow leads in four seats – Haveri, where former CM Basvaraj Bommai is in the fray, Bagalkot and Bijapur, where the BJP has three-term MPs in the form of P C Gaddigoudar and Ramesh Jigajinagi, and Chitradurga.

The Congress party has leads in the range of 50,000 votes in three seats – Bangalore Central, Chamarajnagar, and Bellary – while the BJP has similar leads in Chikkaballapur and Belgaum. The JD(S) has a lead in the 50,000 range in Kolar.