The Janata government holds on
What happened
The party already in office won again, extending its hold on Karnataka's government.
The Janata Party won 139 seats — a landslide by seat share.
That left it comfortably clear of the 113-seat majority mark, with 26 seats to spare.
The Indian National Congress finished second again, with 65 seats.
What changed
The party already in office kept winning, and did so partly by drawing seats away from its closest rival.
2 elections in a row now belonged to the same party.
51 of those swung to it from the INC alone.
In total, 120 of the state's 224 seats changed hands between the two elections.
Notable numbers
A few numbers from that election stand out.
The closest race was in Mudigere, Karnataka, decided by a margin — how far ahead the winner finished, in votes, over whoever came second — of just 33.
The most crowded contest anywhere that year was Belgaum, Karnataka, where 301 candidates stood for a single seat.
Turnout — the share of registered voters who actually cast a ballot — peaked in Holenarasipur, Karnataka, reaching 83.0%.
The largest electorate was Uttarahalli, Karnataka, with 2,56,723 people on the rolls.
The backdrop
This result kept in place the non-Congress government that first took office in Karnataka.
In the 1983 Karnataka Legislative Assembly election, the Janata Party won 95 of 224 seats in a hung assembly. Ramakrishna Hegde was sworn in as Chief Minister on 10 January 1983 with outside support from the Bharatiya Janata Party and independents, forming Karnataka's first non-Congress state government.