For the BJP, last month’s Assembly elections in five States were an opportunity to test drive certain strategic ideas before deploying them in the 2024 general election. The BJP’s victories in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Chattisgarh, and its decent performance in Telangana, have ensured that some of these ideas have now won a long shelf life in the party’s arsenal of electoral strategies.
The first big idea that seemed to have worked for the BJP was not to highlight any State-specific face, but rather to depend on Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the biggest vote catcher, regardless of the State. The BJP’s move was not just based on equations within the party with regard to Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Vasundhara Raje of Rajasthan; it also ensured that, with Mr. Modi at the top and more than a dozen MPs in the fray, both State leaders and the cadre associated with them would feel they had skin in the game.
