The last round of state elections before the 2024 national election was all about the Bharatiya Janata Party. It won three key Hindi heartland states that it had lost to the Congress in 2018—Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Chhattisgarh—all in convincing fashion, and even got a foot into Telangana. The Congress, meanwhile, will wonder what could have been.
In most of the seats where the BJP won, it won big. The margin exceeded 5% in more than half of its victories, and was over 10% in as many as 92 out of the 166 seats it won or was leading in, in Madhya Pradesh.
This marked a sharp reversal of fortunes for the party, which had suffered a major setback five years ago, when it ceded three key states to its rival. (It had wrested back Madhya Pradesh in 2020, however, after several legislators switched sides.)
However, the share of women in three of the four Assemblies will remain dismal despite minor increases. In the fourth, Rajasthan, this will dip below the 10% mark, the only state to see a decrease.
Here’s an analysis of the key trends from the results, through numbers and charts.
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