Journal Articles

The exuberance among the Congress party’s supporters has much to do with the baseline expectation, which had plummeted after the Bharatiya Janata Party’s thumping victory in December 2023 assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Rajasthan. Despite an increase in seat count and vote share, the party continues to face significant structural challenges such as a very narrow social base. A detailed analysis of constituency-level data indicates that the party continues to lag behind in a head-to-head contest against the BJP, and its improved performance is largely in states where the party was a junior partner in the alliance.