Number Theory: Congress right to be shocked, but can it still fight back?
The fact that Congress’s vote share was by and large intact between 2018 and 2023 means that at least at the macro level, its voters did not desert it for BJP.
The Congress’s losses in the heartland states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh have not only overshadowed the party’s victory in Telangana but also been a huge sentiment and morale buster for the party before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. In fact, such is the shock of the defeat that the party’s leadership in Madhya Pradesh has taken to peddling bogus conspiracy theories about Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs). An HT analysis of the results in these three states shows that the Congress has good reason to be surprised about its losses in the recently held elections. However, the question which the party needs to ask is whether it can devise a strategy to overcome the reason for its losses by reading the result -- or continue to shoot itself in the foot by living in denial. Here are four charts which explain this in detail.
