Jamaat recorded historic gains and voters punished the old order, but first-past-the-post maths, patronage networks and political familiarity ultimately returned the BNP to power. In the end, the 13th parliamentary election in Bangladesh was not a revolution. It was a reckoning. When the ballots were counted, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) had secured a decisive victory, returning to power after years in the political wilderness under Sheikh Hasina’s 15-year rule. Most headlines framed it as a dramatic comeback, and rightfully so. But beneath the surface, this was less a tidal wave of voter choice than a carefully navigated current. This was a contest shaped by frustration and the arithmetic of first-past-the-post (FPTP). To understand why BNP prevailed, one must first dispense...