Nov 23, 2024 09:20 PM IST
Jharkhand and Maharashtra assembly polls defy expectations; JMM and BJP secure decisive wins, highlighting the impact of welfare schemes and changing voter dynamics.
In the end, neither Jharkhand nor Maharashtra saw the kind of close contest in their respective assembly polls that experts and opinion polls suggested they would. The Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM)-led INDIA bloc won Jharkhand comfortably (56 of the 81 assembly seats); and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Mahayuti alliance swept Maharashtra, winning/leading in 235 of the 288 seats (as of 10pm on Saturday). In Jharkhand, the JMM’s tribal vote clearly remains intact (it contested 21 of the 28 seats reserved for Scheduled Tribes and won 20; its allies won another 7). And in Maharashtra, the Congress’s performance (a strike rate of 16%) suggests that it is back to its losing ways against the BJP (it lost 56 of the 67 seats where it took the party on); and voters would appear to have settled the question of who the real Nationalist Congress Party and Shiv Sena are. In 34 head-to-head contests, the NCP under Ajit Pawar won/led in 28 and the NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar) in six; and in 39 head-to-head contests, the Shiv Sena under Eknath Shinde won/led in 27 and the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) in 12.
Beyond these, and beyond the national impact of these elections — if the win in Haryana energised the BJP, one can only imagine what the sweep in Maharashtra will do — there are two broader takeaways from the results.
One, welfare works — with cash in hand being worth two cheques in the mail. The incumbents in both Maharashtra and Jharkhand announced, ahead of the polls, a cash handout scheme targeting women. In both states, women turned up in huge numbers to vote. It will be difficult to pinpoint this as the single factor that made a difference, but, in both states, it was definitely one of them.
The second has to do with why everyone, everywhere (around the world, actually, and not just in India), has been reading elections wrong — and for a while. There may be two possible explanations for this. One, no one really seems to be speaking to (or polling) the average voter anymore. Consequently, they do not really have a sense of how the vote will go. Two, the ranks of the swing voters have swelled. Between the Lok Sabha and now, the Mahayuti has increased its vote share at the assembly constituency level by eight percentage points. The two factors aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive, which means they can work together (and likely did).
It’s the kind of thing analysts and pollsters would do well to remember while reading the next election.
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