If the recent election results are any indicator, the performance of the United Progressive Alliance government clearly led to the massive defeat of the Congress-led alliance. The UPA’s passage of the Lokpal Bill, the Food Security Act, laws for women’s safety — all of which looked like progressive policy — were clearly overshadowed by a slew of controversies surrounding the government including the 2G scam, the coal blocks allocation scam, and the Commonwealth Games scam.

The CSDS-Lokniti pre-poll survey (March 2014) provided an important indicator of the coming debacle for the UPA with more than half the respondents stating that the UPA should not be given another chance. The ruling coalition scored poorly on a range of parameters. The post-poll survey asked respondents to think about the single-most important issue they considered while voting in this election. Half the responses covered four major issues — price rise, corruption, lack of development and unemployment. Price rise and unemployment hit the lives of common people directly. Lack of development and corruption were reflections of systemic ills which, people believed, the government was unable to effectively address.

A more detailed analysis of each of these factors as being accountable for the poor image of the UPA indicates the real cause of citizen discontent. One-fifth of the respondents considered price rise to be the most important issue in this election. There was an overall rise in prices of commodities in general and of food items and oil in particular. This dealt a severe blow to the common man. It has also been found in the past that governments have been brought down because of their inability to curb price rise.

During UPA-II, GDP growth rate came down from 9 per cent in 2009-10 to 4.6 per cent in 2013-14. The fiscal deficit coupled with a steep downslide of the rupee resulted in an unstable economy. This caused a severe crisis in the job market. Unemployment and lack of job opportunities was voiced as the single-most important consideration for this election by close to one of every ten respondents. The survey also indicated that over one-thirds felt that the unemployment situation had worsened during UPA-II. Closely linked to shrinking opportunities was the issue of lack of development. This was considered important by over one of every ten respondents.

What further impacted the image of the government was the widespread criticism that it was unable to check corruption. Top-level leaders associated with the government came under the scanner and many of them were found guilty. Moreover, there was much public interest and debate over the Lokpal Bill, which, by the time it was passed by Parliament, was a case of “too little, too late.” Over one of every ten respondents considered corruption to be the most important issue in this election.

When asked about specific indicators to rate the previous government’s performance, respondents were dissatisfied on issues of women’s safety. Over one-third felt that things had deteriorated over the past five years. When asked which party would be more likely to provide better administration for the next five years, close to two of every ten respondents favoured the Congress while close to three of every ten respondents felt that the BJP was best suited.

During the election campaign, the ruling alliance (and the Congress in particular) was unable to defend its performance record. The BJP was able to successfully attack the government, the Congress party and its leaders, and cash in on a strong anti-incumbency wave. This, in large part, accounts for the Congress recording its worst-ever performance.

The Bharatiya Janata Party did extremely well in the mountainous states of North India — Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Jammu and Kashmir — by winning 12 out of the total 15 Lok Sabha seats in the region. Eleven of these 12 seats had a direct contest with the Congress. The BJP failed to open its account only in the Kashmir Valley. The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) won all the three seats in the Valley, defeating the National Conference, an ally of the Congress party.

It is for the first time in Himachal Pradesh that the ruling party in the State did not win a single Lok Sabha seat. The Congress could not manage to even retain the only Lok Sabha seat it had won in 2009. Uttarakhand also witnessed a clean sweep by the BJP. The Congress’s belated move to replace its underperforming Chief Minister Vijay Bahugana with Harish Rawat did not pay any dividends for the party, as it lost all the five seats it had won in 2009 to the BJP. The BJP also seems to have benefitted from the fact that three former Chief Ministers from the party were in the fray. But more than local factors, what seems to have worked most in BJP’s favour was strong support for Narendra Modi. This is true for both Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh. The CSDS-Lokniti post-poll survey shows that more than half the respondents in both States preferred Mr. Modi as Prime Minister. In fact, according to our survey, in no other State in the country did Mr. Modi’s popularity cross the 50 percent mark. Further, when voters in both States were asked what mattered to them most while voting — the prime ministerial candidate, state-level leadership, or the local candidate, most voters said it was the prime ministerial candidate who influenced their voting choice.

In Jammu and Kashmir, the results of the Lok Sabha election came as a shock for the ruling National Conference-Congress alliance, with its opponents, the PDP and the BJP, sharing the State’s six seats. While the PDP won three seats in the valley with one-fifth of the total vote in the State, the BJP won both the seats in Jammu, and the Ladakh seat, securing nearly one-third of the total votes. The NC took a bigger beating than its alliance partner: its vote declined by eight percentage points while the Congress’ declined by two percentage points.

The survey indicates different reasons for the victories of the PDP and the BJP. The PDP seems to have benefitted from the high dissatisfaction with Omar Abdullah’s government in the Kashmir Valley. Over half the respondents in the Valley felt that the condition in Jammu and Kashmir in the last five years had not improved. Moreover, 40 per cent of the respondents in the Valley rated the previous PDP-Congress government as being better than the present NC-Congress government. Only 18 per cent opted for the latter. As far as the BJP’s wins are concerned, particularly in Jammu, it was not just unhappiness with the State government, but also Mr. Modi’s high popularity in the region that seems to have given it the advantage. As opposed to just four per cent of the respondents in the valley wanting Mr. Modi as Prime Minister, the figure in Jammu was nearly nine times higher at 35 per cent. With Assembly elections scheduled in Jammu and Kashmir for later this year, there seems to be very little time for recovery for both the Congress and the National Conference.

The story of the Dalit vote in the 2014 election has two intertwined accounts. First, nationally the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has managed to win more votes among Dalits than the Congress has. Second, the decline of the Bahujan Samaj Party (even among Dalit voters) suggests that the party’s ambition of scaling up nationally is now a distant dream.

How did the BJP fare among Dalits in this election? The party in the post-1990s era managed to attract only one in every ten Dalit voters. However, this time, one in every four Dalits voted for the BJP. The ratio is even higher for the National Democratic Alliance coalition where nearly one in every three Dalits voted for it. The BJP has surpassed both the Congress and the BSP in attracting a larger share of Dalit vote. The BJP’s Dalit vote base in this election is largely the upwardly mobile sections (urban, educated, middle classes, with high media exposure).

The recent shift among Dalit voters was largely propelled by two reasons. First, pre-election alliances played an important role. The party entered into an alliance with Dalit leaders like Ram Vilas Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) in Bihar, Ramdas Athavale’s Republican Party of India (Athvale) in Maharashtra, and inducted Udit Raj in Delhi. Second, as evident from the survey data, Narendra Modi’s popularity cut across caste lines. Mr. Modi and his party became the symbolic vehicles representing the dissatisfaction with the Congress.

Much of the BJP’s gain among Dalit voters came at the expense of the Congress and the BSP. In two-party competition States (Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, and Gujarat), the Congress lost a huge chunk of its Dalit vote to the BJP. In other States, State-level parties such as the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal, the Biju Janata Dal in Odisha, and the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam in Tamil Nadu performed well and garnered a major portion of the Dalit vote. The Left Front in West Bengal received a major drubbing and huge chunk of its Dalit vote base shifted toward the Trinamool Congress. The BJD in Odisha gained a share of Dalit votes from the Congress. Similarly, the Congress lost a substantial share of Dalit votes to the Telangana Rashtra Samithi in Telangana, and to the NDA coalition and YSR Congress in Seemandhra. There was not much change in Dalit voting pattern in the southern states of Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

On the other hand, the BSP lost a substantial portion of its Dalit vote base to the BJP in Uttar Pradesh (U.P.), Haryana, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, and Maharashtra. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) became the principal beneficiary of the losses incurred by the Congress and the BSP among Dalit voters in Delhi and Punjab. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that the BSP’s vote base outside U.P. is largely made of Dalit electorates. The BSP failed to win a single seat in this election. Though the party’s decline in national vote share (6.2 per cent in 2009 to 4.1 per cent in 2014) is largely due to the drubbing it received in U.P., its poor performance outside the State added to the misery. The BSP’s votes share in U.P. declined by 8 percentage points (from 27.4 per cent in 2009 to 19.6 per cent in 2014).

The NES survey data helps in understanding the popularity of the BSP and its leader Mayawati in this election. In 2009 Lok Sabha elections, the BSP and Mayawati were aiming for the high office in Delhi after winning a single-handed majority in Uttar Pradesh in 2007. The party failed to cater to the ambitions of its core constituency. Data show that the preference for Mayawati as Prime Minister has tremendously declined since 2009. Unless Mayawati makes a serious effort in reinventing her organisational machinery, encourages a second line of leadership, and develops a credible political message, Dalit politics is likely to bypass the BSP.