Kathmandu, March 12 -- In Nepal, prior to the March 5 House of Representatives elections, the communist vote share had consistently hovered around 40 percent in seven past elections-dating back to 1990 and including the 2022 polls.

But the March 5 results show that overall support for communist parties has roughly halved, dropping to around 21 percent. This is true for votes secured by the CPN-UML and the Nepali Communist Party (NCP) both in the direct and proportional representation categories.

Under the first-past-the-post (FPTP) or direct category, the UML won 9 out of 165 seats, while the NCP, an amalgam of over a dozen leftist groups and parties including the former CPN (Maoist Centre), secured 7 seats. (Although the victory of NCP...