BJP early mover ploy in MP, Chhattisgarh: Why it has picked the seats it has

Rajneesh Aggarwal, the MP BJP secretary, told The Indian Express: “We have been working towards mobilising our karyakartas since we lost in some challenging seats. We announced the candidates early because there are many hopefuls who emerge in these seats… we announced the list for clarity and to stem infighting. This fight for seats will be tackled early on.”

A look at how the BJP performed in these seats over the past three elections.

Madhya Pradesh: Assembly results since 2008

Results

In 2018, the BJP lost an Assembly election in Madhya Pradesh for the first time since 1998, before Chhattisgarh was carved out of the state. Though no party won an outright majority in 2018, the Congress was closer to the halfway mark, with 114 seats in an Assembly of 230, followed by 109 for the BJP. In terms of vote share, the BJP and Congress were neck-and-neck, getting 41.6% and 41.5% of the votes, respectively.

The Congress got the support of the Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party and Independents to form the government. Kamal Nath became the chief minister, but his government collapsed in 2020 after several Congress MLAs, including Jyotiraditya Scindia, defected to the BJP. Soon after, the BJP’s Shivraj Singh Chouhan formed a government and returned as the CM.

In the 39 seats where the BJP has announced its candidates, the party lost by far bigger margins than its average in the state in 2018. It got 37.1% of the votes across these seats, and won 1. This was a sharp decline from the previous two elections, both in seats and vote share. In 2013, the BJP had, in fact, won 28 of the seats compared to the Congress’s 11.

Despite the poor performance in 2018, the BJP has decided to field 14 of the candidates who lost, besides 23 of the 39 are those who have contested on a BJP ticket at least once in the last three elections. Given its good performance in the elections prior to 2018 in these seats, the party is clearly banking on the fact that familiar faces could yield it results again in 2023.

Margins

A majority of the 39 seats where candidates have been announced by the BJP were decided by margins of around 15,000 votes, while in eight seats, the margin was less than 5,000 votes. The average margin between the winner and runner-up in these seats was 16,473.

In Jhabua (ST), the only seat the BJP won, the margin was 10,437 votes. The closest result was in Gunnaor (SC), where the Congress beat the BJP by 1,984 votes.

Chhattisgarh: Assembly results since 2008

Results

In the 2018 Assembly polls, the Congress won a comfortable majority, winning 68 of the 90 seats, compared with just 15 for the BJP. The Congress’s 43.9% vote share also dwarfed the BJP’s 33.6%. It was the BJP’s first defeat in Chhattisgarh since the state was formed in 2000. In the three state elections before 2018, the BJP’s seat tally never fell below 49.

In the 21 seats where the BJP has already announced its candidates, the party lost 19 to the Congress and the remaining two to the Janta Congress Chhattisgarh (JCC) party, led by former Congress chief minister Ajit Jogi. The BJP’s vote share in these seats was only 29.9%.

The BJP has appeared to struggle in these 21 seats over the past three elections – it has failed to win more seats or get a higher vote share than the Congress here since 2008.

Given its track record, it is perhaps unsurprising that the BJP has named mostly new faces to contest in these 21 seats. Only two of the candidates have contested on BJP tickets in the past three elections. One of them is Lok Sabha MP Vijay Baghel, who will contest against his uncle, the Congress’s CM Bhupesh Baghel, in the Patan constituency.

Margins

In 2018, the BJP had finished runner-up in each of the 21 seats for which it has announced its candidates. The average margin of victory in these seats was 30,734 votes. Only one seat had a margin less than 10,000 votes. In 10 seats, the margin was higher than 30,000 votes . The narrowest win was in Khairagarh, where the JCC beat the BJP by just 870 votes.