What explains the BJP’s Assam victory?

THe Bharatiya Janata company (BJP) led subject popular confederation (NDA) has won Assam for the thirdly consecutive time. What makes the BJP’s victory really important this time is the fact that it has won more than a simple majority – 82  out of 126 MLAs in the state – on its own. This is significantly higher than the 60 assembly constituencies the BJP won in 2016 and 2021 elections. What really explains this remarkable victory of the BJP this time? Here is what the data shows.The BJP led alliance now has almost 50% of the vote shareThis is the most important data point to flag. The combined vote share of the BJP and its allies is now 48% in Assam. This is significantly higher than what it was in 2016 and 2021 assembly elections and even the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. The BJP’s stand-alone contested vote share in the state stands at 55% in these elections, significantly higher than what it was in previous polls. This one statistic lends itself to an unambiguous conclusion: the BJP’s better performance in these elections is a reflection of rise in its popular support rather than tailwinds from factors such as gerrymandering from the 2023 delimitation in the state.Congress has performed significantly worse in terms of seat share despite retaining its vote share from past electionsThe Congress alliance has polled about 34% of the vote share in Assam this time. This is not very different from what it had in 2021 or 2024 elections. However, its seat share has fallen to a paltry 17.5%, the worst performance for the party in the state’s history. What really explains this disproportionate decline in the Congress’s seats? It’s the brutal first-past-the-post (FPTP) system at play. With its opponent camp led by the BJP having reached the 50% vote share, the Congress has seen a sharp fall in its ability to convert votes into seats. This is best seen in its seat share to vote share ratio – a good metric of how a party converts popular support into seats in an FPTP system – falling to its lowest ever in an assembly election in the state. The political geography behind the punishing math for the Congress?It is an important question to ask because Assam is not a homogeneous state in terms of its demography. The state’s population comprises of Assamese speaking Hindus and Muslims and Bengali speaking Hindus and Muslims along with indigenous groups and what are called the tea-tribes in the state. The Muslim population in Assam is geographically skewed. Three sub-regions of the state; Barak Valley, Central Assam and Lower Assam, have a Muslim population share between above 40% but less than 50%, while the other two sub-regions; Upper Assam and North Assam have just 7.3% and 28.6% Muslims. The high Muslim population sub-regions of the state account for 76 of its 126 ACs while the low Muslim ones have the remaining 50.18 out of the Congress’s 19 MLAs have come from high Muslim population sub-regions of AssamThis is the most damning indictment of the Congress’s politics in the state. It has managed to win just one AC in the two low Muslim population sub-regions of the state against the BJP’s 41 AC wins in these. In the high-Muslim population three sub-regions, the Congress’s tally is 20 against the BJP’s 40. It is possible that delimitation did help the BJP in cutting its losses in this region as it won just 29 and 33ACs in 2016 and 2021 elections.What makes Congress’s transformation into a party which has been marginalized among Hindus and is overly dependent on Muslim support in Assam is the religious profile of its MLAs. 18 out of the 19 Congress MLAs in the state are now Muslims. This is in keeping with the trend of rising share of Muslims in the Congress’s legislative contingent in the Assam assembly even as the overall number of Muslim MLAs has fallen in the state. The Congress has won just 3  of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe reserved ACs in Assam, which is its worst ever performance on these seats and represents almost a complete alienation of the party from Assam’s socio-economically weaker Hindu population.