Elections always throw up surprises. For most pollsters who predicted a big victory for the DMK-Congress alliance in Tamil Nadu, the victory of incumbent J Jayalalithaa is a sobering lesson. Frankly, there is something seriously wrong with these pollsters because many of them got even the 2011 assembly elections terribly wrong. For most pundits who argued that the BJP doesn't have a ghost of a chance in at least 40 out of 126 seats in Assam, the results are another sobering lesson in humility. But beyond all this, there are five clear trends that have emerged yet again from Elections 2026. These trends have been identified and analyzed for some years. But these election results have reinforced their validity.
Here are the five trends:
1: Corruption? Say Again? : Both Mamata Banerjee and Jayalalithaa have faced serious charges of corruption. In fact, Jayalalithaa was convicted on charges of corruption by a trial court before the Karnataka High Court set it aside. The Supreme Court is currently looking at the case. Sharada and Narada scams were supposed to haunt and torment Mamata in these elections. Many pundits pontificated that the flyover collapse in Kolkata many weeks ago dealt a body blow to Trinamool Congress. Clearly, the results show that corruption doesn't seem to bother voters if they see other “redeeming” qualities in leaders.
Lalu Yadav too was convicted for conviction. But look at how he and his party performed in the 2015 assembly elections in Bihar. There are numerous other examples of the same kind. So pundits who think that scams in UPA-2 were the main cause for the decline of the Congress need a rethink.
2: Incumbency Is Cool: For years and years since the 1980s, the anti incumbency factor was supposed to play a key role during elections. The conventional wisdom was: barring exceptions like the Left in West Bengal, voter anger against incumbent governments for failure to keep promises was usually the decisive factor during elections. Sheila Dikshit and Tarun Gogoi of Congress; Narendra Modi, Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Dr Raman Singh of the BJP and the Congress- NCP alliance in Maharashtra destroyed that conventional wisdom with three successive victories.
The Akali Dal- BJP alliance shocked pundits and pollsters by retaining power in Punjab in 2012. And of course, Nitish Kumar too won a third successive term, albeit with a different alliance. Don't forget Naveen Patnaik who has won four successive assembly elections in Odisha. Need one say more?
3: Regional Parties Matter: The biggest roadblock and obstacle that the BJP will face when it prepares for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections will not be the Congress or Rahul Gandhi. It will be regional parties. Look at the electoral map. The TMC dominates West Bengal, Mayawati and Mulayam slug it out for Uttar Pradesh, Naveen Patnaik lords it over Odisha since 2000, Chandrababu Naidu dominates truncated Andhra while the TRS rules Telengana. There can be no doubt that these regional parties will play a big role in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
4: Congress In Terminal Decline: The only major state that the Congress rules of today is Karnataka. And it is virtually certain that it will lose to the BJP in the 2018 assembly elections. As it it will likely lose Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh in 2017. The only state it can hope to win back is Punjab. But there are clear indications that Arvind Kejriwal will spoil even that party. There is every chance that there will not be a single state that the Congress will rule, except a few in the north east, by 2018. Make no mistake: 2019 will be the last chance for the perpetual “crown prince” Rahul Gandhi.
5: BJP Is Numero Uno: Not much needs to be written about this as it has been repeated again and again. The latest election results have doubly reinforced a trend that was visible many years ago to discerning analysts: the BJP is the most formidable political party with a pan Indian presence, something that the Congress was from the 1970s to the 1980s. It is now decisively ahead of the Congress in terms of MLAs across India. And there seems to be no doubt that it has started the baby steps from being a fringe player in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. What next?
