How the BJP alliance won Maha

The BJP has used its position as the largest party in Maharashtra to include two of the biggest regional factions into its fold, and used this to pull off a massive victory

- Roshan Kishore, Abhishek Jha and Nishant Ranjan

Last week, HT published an analysis of elector count in Maharashtra and other states to show that changes in the number of electors between the 2024 Lok Sabha and assembly elections in Maharashtra did not suggest anything unwarranted when compared to other states.

The Congress has been attributing Maharashtra’s swing from a victory for the Congress, Shiv Sena (UBT) and Nationalist Congress Party Sharad Pawar (NCP-SP) alliance (henceforth MVA) in the Lok Sabha to a big loss in the assembly elections held six months later to a large-scale manipulation of electoral rolls.

Having made this point, the larger question remains unanswered. What exactly led to the large victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Shiv Sena and the NCP alliance (henceforth Mahayuti) in the last assembly elections held in the state? We will attempt to answer this question by giving statistics which are both big picture and hyperlocal.

It is not uncommon for results to flip between national, state polls held in quick succession

Politics at the national level and states often works on very different dynamics. Maharashtra itself is a good example. The BJP and Shiv Sena alliance swept the state in the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections winning 42 and 41 out of the 48 parliamentary constituencies (PCs). But things were very different in the 2014 and 2019 assembly elections which followed the Lok Sabha polls. In 2014, all four major parties contested separately, and in 2019, the BJP and Shiv Sena alliance did much worse than in the Lok Sabha elections.