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What Sealed BJP’s Victory in Chhattisgarh?
The Bharatiya Janata Party, which was decimated by the Congress in the assembly polls held in November 2018, bounced back in Chhattisgarh by recording an impressive victory in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. While a strong anti-incumbency sentiment worked against the BJP in the assembly elections, Narendra Modi’s image-building exercise helped the party’s candidates win in the Lok Sabha polls.
Decimated by the Congress in the assembly polls held in November 2018, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) returned stronger by winning nine of the 11 seats in the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections in Chhattisgarh. This is not the first time that party performed well in the Lok Sabha elections. In the last three parliamentary elections, the state sent 10 members of Parliament (MPs) from the BJP to the Lok Sabha. What was however new in these elections was that for the first time since it came into being in 2000, Chhattisgarh saw a Lok Sabha verdict different from the assembly poll results. The BJP was able to increase its vote share to 50.7% from 33% in the assembly elections. On the other hand, the Congress vote share stood at 40.9%, a gain of 2.5% from 2014 but down by about 2 percentage points since the 2018 assembly elections (Table 1). Based on the data of the National Election Study (NES) 2019, this article aims to understand and analyse the electoral outcome of the state and looks at the factors that could have made this turnaround possible for the BJP.
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