Is The Same Mistake By BJP Which Cost It Four States, Also Resulting In A Loss In Jharkhand Assembly Polls?

The trends for the Jharkhand Assembly Polls are becoming clearer by the minute and the BJP may lose out on retaining power bar any last moment twist.

The party is leading on just 29 out of 81 seats currently despite having a single largest vote share of 33.61 per cent. Incidentally, this is just 1.73 percentage points less than the JMM-Congress-RJD combine.

In the event of this vote share trend, psephologist Dr Praveen Patil the founder of 5Forty3 has pointed out that this is the fifth state in the last two years wherein the BJP has fallen short of a clear majority due to a razor thin vote deficit of 1-2 per cent.

As per Dr Patil, this voteshare shortfall is a result of data-strategic errors by the BJP and has repeated in states like Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Karnataka.

He added that ever since the first phase the party’s vote share was diminishing from the peak of May 2019 when it won 11 out of 14 seats in the state.

Dr Patil questioned as to whether the party after realising the potential vote stare shortfall, tried to plug the gap in the next 3 weeks of polling as just 2 to 3 per cent swing votes decide the winner in fragmented state polls.

Incidentally, following the first phase of voting, Dr Patil had tweeted that the BJP failed to take decisive lead in any of the 13 seats and it could have been a result of complacency, wrong digital approach, data gaps or strategic errors.