No political party has a clear 50% majority in the Karachi City Council so the PPP, JI, PTI and other parties are going to have to form a coalition or alliance to cross this threshold. Do you want to see how a possible coalition for the Karachi mayor election may form? You can use our interactive graphic to make your own.

In the local government polls held on Sunday, January 15, 2023, no party could win a simple majority in Karachi division. Hence, a coalition of multiple parties is inevitable.

The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), which won the highest number of seats, has said that it will explore the possibility of entering into an alliance with the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), the party with the second highest number of seats.

However, PPP’s Saeed Ghani also said that they would not offer the JI the mayorship. His words suggested that talks between PPP and JI may prove difficult. (Read more on it in Urdu here )

The second possibility is an alliance between JI and the Pakistan Tehreek Insaf (PTI), which came third in the Karachi local bodies election.

The PPP may also want to have its mayoral candidate elected with the help of smaller parties such as the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PMLN) and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI). It already has a partnership with them in the federal government.

But there is a big question. Can all of the smaller parties and independent candidates combined reach the threshold of 50% or 178 seats that they need to win the Karachi mayor election?

You can explore options by clicking on the party names in the interactive graphic above. A single click will exclude that party from the graphic and a second click will bring it back.

For example, if you click once each on JI and PTI. The two parties disappear from the graphic. Now, what is left is PPP and smaller parties. See if they fall below the 50% threshold.

Similarly, if you click once each on PPP and all the other smaller parties and IND for independent candidates, you have only JI and PPP left. Do these two parties cross the 50% threshold?