Long after the dust of the recently-concluded general elections settles and the new NDA government gets down to governing the country, the numbers thrown up by the polls will continue to be diced and dissected. Political analysts and academicians will go through the election data with a fine-toothed comb and come up with their various analyses and explanations on why the Indian people voted the way they did.

But it isn’t just the experts who are obsessed with the numbers. Ordinary citizens too, especially the ones who enjoy a good argument over politics, look at the numbers with particular interest. Though the numbers put out have a scientific validity and authenticity to them, our analyses of them often suffer from our in-built biases, predilections and baggage that we carry.

A typical example would be the BJP’s performance in Tamil Nadu. That the DMK-Congress combine swept the elections winning all 40 seats (39 in Tamil Nadu and one in Puducherry) would certainly enthuse these parties’ supporters. The BJP despite its high decibel campaign drew a blank. But its supporters would point to a significant jump in its vote share — from 3.5 per cent to over 11 per cent.

Similarly, at the national level, the INDIA bloc has done creditably, falling short by just 40 seats of the magic figure of 272. This will surely excite this combine’s supporters. But the BJP supporters will argue that their party still won the largest number of seats and its NDA alliance went on to form the government. There is also the issue of whether the change in vote shares and seats correspond in a straightforward way.

Though most of us crave for objectivity and neutrality in political analyses, it is often incredibly hard to achieve.

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