A round of elections that signals structural dominance

The phase that Indian politics has gone through since 2014 is widely referred to as the fourth party system; The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) forms a dominant pole that increasingly structures the field of competition at both the national and state levels. Some observers have periodically asked whether this BJP-dominated system represents a permanent structural dominance or a more temporary electoral dominance built largely on and supported by the charismatic leadership of Narendra Modi.

These rounds of state elections (in Assam, West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry) should resolve this issue in favor of structural dominance. The defeat of the National Democratic Alliance in the 2024 general elections showed that Mr Modi’s charismatic appeal was beginning to ebb from the dizzying heights it had reached in the previous decade. But the BJP has fared much better in the electoral phase between 2024-26 compared to 2014-16, when Mr Modi still carried the transformative aura of vikas purush, or 2019-21, when he became the pro-poor messiah who embodied the unparalleled trust of the people. Only in the current cycle has the BJP managed to come to power in Odisha, Delhi and West Bengal, the biggest prize of all.