In Rajasthan, local anti-incumbency against MLAs reason for Congress loss: Data
Hindustan TimesIn keeping with a 30-year trend that sees the incumbent being defeated in Rajasthan, the Bhartiya Janata Party has defeated the Congress in the state. There does seem to be merit in the argument that local anti-incumbency against MLAs played a bigger role in this year’s Rajasthan results than a macro anti-incumbency against the Congress. An HT analysis of flips at the assembly constituency level in 2018 and 2023 shows that both the BJP and the Congress have lost a large share of ACs they won in 2018. If the 13 independent MLAs who joined the Congress government in 2018 are considered part of the party, the party can be considered to have won 113 assembly constituencies in 2018. It was this combination of avoiding local anti-incumbency against its own MLAs and exploiting state-wide, perhaps even nation-wide anti-incumbency against the Congress that gave the BJP the biggest ever victory for any party in Rajasthan in the 2013 elections.