Since the Bharatiya Janata Party lost the Assembly election in Jharkhand in late 2019, there has been a renewed sense of elation in the anti-BJP front. Perhaps emboldened by the citizenship law protests, or perhaps by a genuine sense of achievement at what they felt was the political tides finally shifting in their favour, this narrative traces its origins to May 2018 — a time when the BJP controlled 21 of the 29 states. 

Of the 12 Assembly elections held since then, the BJP and its allies have gained control of only one state (Mizoram) and lost five key states. This might appear worrisome to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a larger-than-life persona to his supporters, who almost single-handedly handed the BJP two consecutive electoral victories. And yet, in a span of 20 months while still at the helm of the country, his carefully crafted empire appears to be crumbling. 

Or is it?

The first to fall in this apparent house of cards was the state of Rajasthan. In the 2018 Vidhan Sabha election in December, the Congress-led alliance secured a respectable majority, with the Congress itself almost securing a majority on its own with 99 seats in the 199-seat Assembly. The BJP performed fairly poorly compared to earlier elections, getting 73 seats. 

However, apart from gaining a majority, the Congress perhaps has nothing much to be elated about. Its vote share stood at 39.8 percent, which is just marginally more than the BJP’s 39.3 percent. In a state with an electorate of over 4.5 crore, this difference amounts to just 2.25 lakh. Moreover, of the 172 seats shared by these two parties, 59 seats were decided by a margin of less than five percent. 

Perhaps most importantly, if one looks at the electoral of the state, since 1993, no party has been able to win two consecutive elections. So, the Congress’s victory could just be a continuation of this trend.

The next state to fall was Madhya Pradesh. Like Rajasthan, the Congress fell a couple short of the majority, securing 114 seats, with the BJP breathing down the Congress’s neck with only five fewer seats. Despite its victory, the Congress secured fewer votes than the BJP. Of the 223 seats shared between them, a total of 68 seats were decided by a margin of less than five percent. 

However, the one positive takeaway from Madhya Pradesh is that this is the first Congress government in the state since 2003. 

The last state to fall in 2018 was Chhattisgarh. This was also the state where the Congress performed best, winning a strong majority of 68 seats in the 90-seat Assembly and forming a government only for the second time since the state was formed in 2000. 

Apart from being governed by the Congress, these three states have one more thing in common: all three voted substantively in favour of the BJP just five months later in the Lok Sabha election. In Rajasthan, the BJP swept all 24 seats with a staggering 59.1 percent of the vote share. In Madhya Pradesh, it won all but one seat with 58.6 percent of the total votes cast. And in Chhattisgarh, it won nine of the 11 seats, securing 51.5 percent of the votes. Only two seats in all these states were won with a margin of less than five percent. 

These statistics speaks volumes about Modi’s popularity in the Hindi-speaking belt. Anyone who thinks his popularity is diminishing has clearly not been paying attention to the Lok Sabha result. 

Maharashtra was the BJP’s first test after its success in the 2019 Lok Sabha election. Despite not being able to form a government, it came out as the leading party with 105 seats and 26.1 percent of the vote share — the highest among all parties. While this was admittedly a drop from 122 seats in 2014, had the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance stuck till the end, the BJP could have formed its second consecutive government in the state. To those still sceptical of the BJP’s influence in Maharashtra, consider that it won almost half the Lok Sabha seats just eight months before in May 2019, with 27 percent of the votes. 

The fact that the party is not in power is more about the BJP’s inability to strike a compromise, rather than an indication of its loosening grip on the state’s politics. It is perhaps no secret that the people of Maharashtra gave the mandate to a BJP-Shiv Sena alliance. Had the alliance broken up before the elections, the results could have been vastly different. 

As if a repetition of what played out in Maharashtra, Jharkhand was yet another state that could have ended differently for the BJP. Nevertheless, it still managed to win 25 seats on its own and increased its vote share to 33.37 percent. Though it did not form an alliance in 2019, the cumulative vote share of the BJP and the All Jharkhand Students Union, its 2014 ally, stood at 41.5 percent — almost five percent more than the cumulative vote share of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha and Congress alliance. 

It would be worthwhile to point out that in the Lok Sabha election, the BJP secured 11 of the 14 Lok Sabha seats in Jharkhand with 51.6 percent of the vote share, while the Congress and the JMM won one seat each and shared between them only 17.5 percent of the total votes. 

Finally, here’s a reproduction of the image that is being shared widely to demonstrate BJP’s shrinking footprint. While it is factually correct, anyone who interprets it as evidence of the BJP’s waning popularity would be well-advised to look at the image of the BJP’s Lok Sabha performance. To iterate, the BJP won 303 seats on its own with 37.7 percent of the votes, the largest seat-share victory since 1984 and the largest vote-share victory since 1989. 

For all practical purposes, the BJP’s control over the states seems to be diminishing, allowing the Congress and regional parties an opportunity to make gains. However, this largely appears to be a result of the BJP’s strategic miscalculations and inability to compromise with its state allies, rather than evidence of a dint in its appeal. The Congress and the anti-BJP front should be careful in interpreting the recent results as people rejecting the BJP’s message, or they risk repeating their performance in the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha polls. 

After all, it would be wishful thinking to believe that a party that became the first since 1984 to gain an absolute majority in two consecutive elections can crumble so easily. On the national stage at least, Modi is still the man to beat. 

The piece originally said the BJP’s vote share in Jharkhand ‘was the highest among all parties by a large margin’. The sentence has been corrected.

Also read: Everything that’s wrong with the maps showing BJP’s electoral decline