India 2014 - Results

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Are these merely leads or actual called races? If they're called races congratulations to the NDA.

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According to NDTV, Congress has lost Udaipur, with a 22% margin in 2009.

NDA majority.

Wikipedia says Udaipur was won by the BJP in 2004 (when they were far from a majority) -- could maybe just be a very elastic seat, or unusual circumstances in 2009?

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Down in the weeds, a successful night for the Trinamool Congress?

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Rahul Gandhi is trailing in Amethi.

Where are you seeing that?

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The woman who's beating Rahul Gandhi in Amethi, Smriti Irani, is not your typical BJP politician in a lot of ways: besides being a woman (and prominent actress), she's a convert from Hinduism to Zoroastrianism. How many religious minorities are there in the BJP caucus?

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The woman who's beating Rahul Gandhi in Amethi, Smriti Irani, is not your typical BJP politician in a lot of ways: besides being a woman (and prominent actress), she's a convert from Hinduism to Zoroastrianism. How many religious minorities are there in the BJP caucus?

I'm surprised than Zoroastrianism still exists. I thought it disappeared during Antiquity.

No -- I actually have a distant cousin who converted for marriage. There was a group of Zoroastrians who fled, sometime in the 800s, to India, where they became the ancestors of modern-day Parsis (such as Smriti Irani's husband), who continue to adhere to Zoroastrianism to this day. There are about 70,000 in India, along with some 25,000 Persian Zoroastrians who continue to live in Iran and 10,000 in Afghanistan, with maybe 35,000 more in Diaspora in the Western countries. There's quite a few in Chicago ( http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2008-12-08/news/0812070263_1_zoroastrian-center-iran-and-india-illinois ).

In other news, Congress swept all 7 Delhi seats in 2009 but is being shut out this time; the BJP is winning 6 to the AAP's 1.

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So what will happen to Congress after this wipeout?

As India's traditional governing party, and probably the only truly national party since the BJP is still weak in Dravidian areas, I have a feeling the INC will regroup and survive. Fianna Fail and the Canadian Liberals (also traditional governing parties, albeit in more developed countries) were handed much more severe defeats in 2011, and neither died of it.

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DMK has zero seats in TN.  Had they had a tie-up with INC at least DMK-INC could have pulled off some high single digit seats together.  As it is both are headed toward zero.

Still a deeply disappointing result, of course, but isn't the INC leading in Theni? 1 is better than 0.

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Apna Dal: I think this translates as "My Party" although "Our Party" would make more sense.

I'd go with "Your Party". Strictly speaking this'd be [predetermined subject's] "Own Party".

This. "[Subject]'s Own" would be the translation.

As in svoy/svoya/svoyo/svoi?