Results show Congress still far behind BJP

The 2024 Lok Sabha elections saw a massive, almost unprecedented, political polarisation in India. The contest was largely between two broad camps, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and the Congress-led Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA). Parties that did not align themselves to either of these two sides, such as the Biju Janata Dal or the YSR Congress Party, saw themselves getting decimated in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Six months after the Lok Sabha elections, how do things look like for the NDA and INDIA?
The short answer to this question is that the NDA draws strength from its biggest constituent while INDIA loses it because of the Congress. This is largely because of the Congress’s inability to do better against the BJP. Going forward, it also means that the Congress will have to struggle to be seen as the natural leader in the INDIA bloc. The numbers speak for themselves.
This is obvious in the Lok Sabha statistics. Out of the 293 MPs that the NDA has, 82% or 240 come from the BJP. The Congress, on the other hand, had a share of just 42.3% of the INDIA bloc’s 234 MPs. However, the latest assembly elections provide a good opportunity to do this comparison at the state level. The NDA currently has 20 chief ministers among Indian states and Union territories; 65% or 13 of them come from the BJP. Among the nine chief ministers in the INDIA bloc, the Congress has only three: in Karnataka, Telangana and Himachal Pradesh. This also holds at the level of number of MLAs which is the basic unit of the federal polity in India. The BJP has 1,593 MLAs in the country as of today, which is 2.4 times the number of Congress MLAs in the country. This more than nullifies the advantage of the rest of INDIA bloc constituents which have 965 MLAs compared to just 515 from other NDA partners. The number of MLAs includes those from all states and UTs that have a legislature, and for Maharashtra and Jharkhand it includes latest results.

A look at strike rate numbers – seats won as a share of seats contested – should make this clear. The Congress collapsed to one of its worst ever strike rates in the 2014 elections when it won just 9.35% of the 464 parliamentary constituencies (PCs) it contested. The BJP’s strike rate in 2014 was a massive 65.9%, its best ever in Lok Sabha elections then.
Things were pretty much the same for the Congress in 2019 when its strike rate was 12.4% compared to BJP’s 69.5%. This changed significantly in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections when the BJP’s strike rate fell to 54.4% and the Congress’s went up to 30.5%.
If one were to compare strike rates of the Congress and BJP in assembly elections held after the 2024 Lok Sabha, the BJP has managed to improve its figures while the Congress’s 2024 number has not improved. To be sure, Lok Sabha and assembly polls are not entirely comparable and it was believed until the 2024 results that the BJP enjoyed a bigger advantage in national polls. Having said this, strike rates are a good way to look at the political momentum or lack of it behind a party and the BJP seems to be doing something right. (See Chart 2)

Once again, the picture becomes clear if we look at the Congress and BJP performances in ACs where both of them contested between Lok Sabha elections since the BJP captured power in 2014. Between the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the Congress won 33.1% of such ACs while the BJP won 40.5%. The remaining were won by other parties. Between the 2019 and 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the Congress’s strike rate in such ACs fell to 22% while the BJP’s went up to 46.4%. In the assembly election cycle after 2024 Lok Sabha elections, these numbers are 20% and 59% for the Congress and BJP, respectively. We have not included any bypolls in our analysis. (See Chart 3 )

The numbers are unambiguous. To pivot balance of power in national politics, Congress will have to better its game against BJP. Allies can only help to an extent.