Good Times

If recent trends in Indian elections are anything to go by, nothing succeeds like success for a certain period of time. The Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) strong performance in the assembly elections in Maharashtra, where it emerged the single-largest party and in Haryana, winning a majority on its own, was an outcome of its success in recent Lok Sabha elections as also state-level political variables.

In Maharashtra, the BJP’s decision to break its long-standing alliance with the Shiv Sena on the eve of the elections turned out favourably for the party, thanks also to the well-timed split in the ruling Congress-Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) alliance. The fragmented electoral field and its strong showing in one region (Vidarbha) allowed the BJP to win substantially larger number of seats (122 out of the 288 in the fray) even though its vote share was only marginally higher than the other contenders.