What Cong-BSP tie-up could have achieved
BSP has the potential to play spoiler in a large number of seats in MP. In fact, the party has hurt both the Congress and the BJP in the last three elections
Among the five states that will go to polls later this year, Madhya Pradesh will perhaps be the most keenly watched. It has more Lok Sabha seats (29) than Rajasthan, Telangana, Chhattisgarh or Mizoram.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been in power in both Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh for three consecutive terms now.
Reading too much into assembly election results to predict Lok Sabha performances has its own hazards.
But it is difficult to deny that a win or loss for the BJP in Madhya Pradesh will significantly influence the larger antiincumbency narrative for 2019.
One factor that is likely to add to the BJP’s advantage in this crucial state is the failure of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Congress to forge a prepoll alliance.
Many, including this author, had argued that an alliance between the Congress and the BSP could have been a game-changer in the forthcoming assembly elections.
The combined vote share of the Congress and the BSP was bigger than that of the BJP in six out of nine elections held in the states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh since 2003. To be sure, headline numbers can sometimes be misleading while making such arguments.
This is because they cannot capture the complex electoral dynamics on the ground. For example, if two alliance partners cannot ensure transfer of each other’s core-supporters’ votes in an election, then the effort can backfire. Similarly, a pre-poll alliance without ideological congruence could actually end up buttressing the incumbent’s
claim that the opposition is only interested in capturing power by all means.
An HT analysis of election statistics in Madhya Pradesh suggests that the assumed gains from a Congress-BSP alliance could not be as straightforward as what appears to be the case from simple addition of the vote share of two parties. Two sets of statistics are worth
highlighting here: effective number of participants (ENOP) and seats where the BSP played spoiler in the 2003, 2008 and 2013 elections.
ENOP is the reciprocal of sum of squares of vote share received by each candidate in a constituency.
It measures actual degree of political competition in a given constituency.
An example can make this clear. If there are four candidates in an election and all of them get 25% votes, ENOP will be four. However, if the distribution of votes was 55%, 40%, 2.5% and 2.5%, ENOP will come down to 2.2.
Chart 1 gives the value of median ENOPs for all assembly constituencies (AC) in Madhya Pradesh and ACs where the Congress and the BJP emerged victorious. Using median rather than the mean ensures that the average is not influenced by extreme values. The statistics
show a consistent pattern. Median ENOP for seats won by the Congress has always been larger than the value of entire states.
This difference was more than 10% in the 2003 and 2013 elections. This suggests that a greater degree of multi-polarity might actually work to the advantage of the Congress in the state, while the reverse might hold for the BJP.
(Chart 1: median ENOP in all seats, BJP seats and Congress seats)
The finding makes sense intuitively. A large part of the BJP’s political narrative today is targeted against the prolonged rule of the Congress, best captured in the slogan of “Congress-Mukt Bharat”. An increase in number of effective contestants might force the BJP to dilute this attack and divert its energies in countering other parties, which might provide a breather to the
Congress. The BSP has not won even 10 seats in the last three elections held in Madhya Pradesh.
However, it is an important ally because it plays a spoiler in a large number of seats.
The easiest way to measure this is to look at the number of seats where the BSP’s vote share is greater than the victory margin. The number of such seats was 63, 98 and 74 in the 2003, 2008 and 2013 elections.
The more interesting question is who pays the price when the BSP acts as a spoiler in an assembly constituency. A simple filter can be applied to check this. If the BSP’s vote share was greater than the victory margin on a given seat, then the party which came second will see the BSP as a spoiler.
Our analysis shows that the BSP has hurt both the Congress and the BJP in a
significant number of seats in the last three elections.
To be sure, the number of seats where the BSP played spoiler for the Congress has been higher than the BJP in each election.
(Chart 2: seats in which BSP plays spoiler for Congress and BJP)
A Congress-BSP alliance in Madhya Pradesh would have been more formidable against the BJP in terms of sum of vote shares.
But the two statistics discussed above also suggest that it could have added to the BJP’s edge vis-à-vis the Congress by making the elections more bipolar and depriving the Congress of victories in seats where the BSP acts as a spoiler for the BJP.
The latter would be more likely if the Congress and BSP’s social support base has an antagonistic relation at the grassroots level.
Elections results will tell us which of these two arguments mattered more in the ultimate analysis.
ANALYSIS OF ELECTION STATISTICS IN MP SUGGESTS THAT THE ASSUMED GAINS FROM A CONGRESSBSP ALLIANCE COULD NOT BE AS STRAIGHTFORWARD AS WHAT APPEARS TO BE THE CASE