Other than the states in which national parties have an entrenched local leadership (Manipur for Congress, Goa for BJP), it has been regional formations all the way in the elections whose results were announced on Tuesday.
The Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh has rightly drawn attention, but the kudos for breaking the sound barrier go to Shiromani Akali Dal in Punjab.
High polling normally favours the challengers, but in this case the record voter turnout of 70 per cent in Punjab helped the Akalis retain power along with allies BJP. The BJP performed poorly, but the Akalis more than made up the slack.
In doing so, they gave birth to a phenomenon. Never before in Punjab have incumbents been returned by the electors.
While a detailed analysis of what went wrong for the Congress is awaited, it seems more than likely that the party’s poll management was deficient.
Taking comfort in traditional political and electoral patterns, the party led by Captain Amrinder Singh in the state took victory for granted. Following the assumption, reports suggest that not much effort was expended on getting party rebels to withdraw from the fray. As a consequence, many seats have been lost by thin margins as a consequence.
In small states this factor counts more than in larger ones because even a few seats can turn the scales.
In UP, the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party have essentially swapped places, although the margin of win has been greater for SP than it had been for BSP in 2007. In order to make BSP lose, it is fairly clear that voters across the board- cutting across castes- backed the SP, although only five years ago “goonda raj” under SP rule had been everyone’s favourite slogan. The BJP and Congress remained roughly static in UP, with BJP doing somewhat worse than 2007 and the Congress a shade better, but neither crossing the critical threshold in terms of percentage of votes polled which leads to noticeable seat yields.
Parties like SP and BSP, on account of reasonably committed caste blocs linked to primordial factors, start an election with a percentage of votes already in the bag, and a party organisation that doesn’t need much enthusing.
It is worth pondering what elections might look like in a state like UP if the politics of identity was less of a marker.