In Maps: All That You Need To Know About 'Madhya Pradesh 2023'

Madhya Pradesh witnessed paradigmatic assembly elections recently, in which, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) swept the state with a record vote share of 49 per cent. The contests became more bipolar, the impact of the Congress party’s identity politics was trumped by a significant supra-caste counter consolidation, and the BJP gained votes in bulk from almost all communities.

Like all large states, different regions of Madhya Pradesh voted differently, but by and large, the BJP swept the Malwa Plateau, while the Congress held on to pockets in the tribal areas, and the Chambal region in the north.

This point is reinforced by a map showing the vote swing towards the BJP from 2018 to 2023. Note the number of dark blues, indicating a sizeable vote swing, across the central plateau region, the tribal belts, and in the north.

The Congress vote share map, on the other hand, tells its own story. Note the higher concentration of better performances in the tribal belt and in the north.

But, as mentioned at the start, there was a third factor at play: increasing bipolarity. This has benefited the BJP. See the ‘Others’ vote share map, and, more pertinently, a vote swing map below that.

But, perhaps, the most important inference to be drawn from these results is that the BJP appears to have finally broken a Muslim-Dalit axis in the state. One adducible data point is that the Bahujan Samaj Party’s (BSP) vote share declined from 5 per cent to 3 per cent, with most of that moving to the BJP.