Rajasthan Assembly Elections 2023: What A Reading Of Margins Tells Us

In a state like Rajasthan, where much of the land is either arid desert or rugged hills, life has always flourished on the margins of human endurance.

Its legislative elections are no different, with political fortunes often swaying from one side to the other across agonisingly narrow gaps.

When half the seats in a house of 200 are won or lost by single digit percentage points, and the difference in vote shares between the two principal parties is less than the error band of an opinion poll, it is easy to succumb to confirmation bias.

That is why, as we shall see, it would be injudicious to laud the Congress party’s victory in the 2018 assembly elections beyond a point, or to beat down the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP's) defeat that year.

The historical results table first:

In 2018, the vote share difference between the Congress and the BJP was just 0.2 per cent. That narrowness was reflected in a number of assembly seats as well.

In order to quantify this, to make sense of what is happening in Rajasthan, and to appreciate just how tough making forecasts is, a tranche-wise win margin analysis was carried out on the 2018 data.

The results speak for themselves:

From the table above, we see that the win margin in 122 of 200 assembly seats was less than 10 per cent.

Even more agonisingly, the victory margin was less than 5 per cent in 59 of these 122 close contests, and 40 seats were decided by less than 3 per cent of the popular vote.

The implication is that just a few hundred votes going this way or that, in less than two dozen seats, could have turned the verdict on its head.

The geographical distribution of the margins in depicted in a map below.

We see that the bulk of the close contests were in Udaipur and Jaipur divisions. This is normal for Rajasthan, as Udaipur division has traditionally been the swing region in assembly elections.

The problem for the BJP in 2018 was that it was hit by a double blow — anti-incumbency and internal dissent. No party can weather that storm.

Indeed, if the BJP managed to spare its blushes in 2018, it is because of the remarkable surge it garnered in the 2013 elections, when a Narendra Modi effect was clearly at work.

This is easily demonstrated by a dimensionless cross-plot of BJP win/loss margins in 2018 versus vote swing between 2013 and 2018.

It is clear from the plot that it is this remarkable surge in 2013 which allowed the BJP to still win dozens of seats in 2018, even though the party suffered painful negative vote swings of even 20-30 per cent (see upper left quadrant).

In addition, the internal dissent meant that, apart from losing a large number of seats to the Congress, the BJP additionally lost 23 seats to other parties and independents.

But that situation does not exist today. In Rajasthan, it is the contender who always has the upper hand. In addition, under such conditions, numerically speaking, small swings can lead to large sweeps; especially when, compounding the confusion, a good fifth of the vote rests with the ‘Others’.

Further, ground reports and sources indicate that the BJP has been active for months now, actively pursuing an intense grassroots-level campaign, particularly in the swing area of Udaipur division (and elsewhere).

It is probably this approach which is being reflected in multiple poll surveys which give the BJP a clear edge. This would also aid in overcoming the party’s lack of a clear chief ministerial face.

And, above all that, is the utter, sordid mess the Congress finds itself in. The party has squandered whatever goodwill it received in 2018 through a hapless, hopeless, and frankly clueless administration led by Ashok Gehlot. Sachin Pilot’s perpetual sulk has only added to their electoral burdens.

Consequently, the advantage lies with the BJP, and if it wins, then the victory should ideally be credited to its cadre of countless, faceless karyakartas, who have worked so hard, for so long.