BJP's "Gujarat Model" Falls Flat In Karnataka. Data Explained

Before the election, the BJP made two bold moves - one, to wean away from dependency on strong Lingayat political leaders who have usually held the reins of the BJP in Karnataka.

Along with anti-incumbency and a strong narrative by the opposition, the BJP's diminished performance in the 2023 Karnataka election is perhaps an indictment of its social engineering strategies.

Before the election, the BJP made two bold moves - one, to wean away from dependency on strong Lingayat political leaders who have usually held the reins of the BJP in Karnataka; and second, denying candidature to what it perceived to be unpopular MLAs. This, said BJP strategists at the time, was a playbook adopted from Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh to counter anti-incumbency, where 'Hindutva' often trumped caste calculations and the individual influence of MLAs.

Data from the 2023 election shows that the BJP failed in both accounts, by driving the Lingayats towards the Congress and by fostering a situation where rebels ate into BJP's votes.

Congress's caste calculations trump BJP's