Results show Congress still far behind BJP | Latest news India

The short answer to this question is that the NDA gets its strength from its largest constituent while INDIA loses it because of the Congress. This is largely due to the Congress’s inability to do better against the BJP. Going forward, this also means that the Congress will have to fight to be seen as the natural leader of the INDIA bloc. The numbers speak for themselves.

This is evident from the Lok Sabha statistics. Of the 293 MPs in the NDA, 82%, or 240, are from the BJP. The Congress, on the other hand, held only 42.3% of the 234 MPs in the INDIA bloc. However, the last legislative elections provide a good opportunity to make this comparison at the state level. The NDA currently has 20 chief ministers from across Indian states and Union Territories; 65% or 13 of them are 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 applies to the number of MPs, which is the basic unit of the federal political system in India. The BJP today has 1,593 MLAs in the country, which is 2.4 times the number of Congress MLAs in the country. This largely cancels out the advantage of the rest of the constituents of the INDIA bloc who have 965 MPs compared to only 515 for the other NDA partners. The number of MPs includes those from all states and UTs that have legislatures, and for Maharashtra and Jharkhand, it includes the latest results.

A look at strike rates – seats won as a proportion of seats contested – should make this clear. The Congress collapsed and witnessed one of the worst strike rates ever in the 2014 elections, when it won only 9.35% of the 464 parliamentary constituencies (PCs) it contested. The BJP’s strike rate in 2014 was 65.9%, the best ever in Lok Sabha elections.

Things were pretty much the same for the Congress in 2019, where its strike rate was 12.4% compared to 69.5% for the BJP. This changed significantly in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, when the BJP’s strike rate fell to 54.4% and the Congress’s increased to 30.5%.

If we compare the strike rates of the Congress and the BJP in the parliamentary elections held after the 2024 Lok Sabha, the BJP managed to improve its numbers while those of the Congress in 2024 did not improve. Certainly, the Lok Sabha and Assembly polls are not entirely comparable and it was believed until the 2024 results that the BJP enjoyed a greater advantage in the national polls. That said, strike rates are a good way to gauge the political momentum or lack thereof behind a party and the BJP appears to be doing something right. (See chart 2)

Once again, the picture becomes clear if we look at the performances of the Congress and the BJP in the ACs where both have contested between the Lok Sabha elections since the BJP came to power in 2014. Between the elections of 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha, Congress won 33.1% votes. these ACs while the BJP won 40.5%. The other parties won the remaining elections. Between the 2019 and 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the Congress’s strike rate in these ACs fell to 22%, while that of the BJP rose to 46.4%. In the parliamentary election cycle after the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, these figures are 20% and 59% for the Congress and the BJP, respectively. We did not include any workarounds in our analysis. (See chart 3)

The numbers are unambiguous. To shift the balance of power in national politics, the Congress will have to up its game against the BJP. Allies can only help to a certain extent.