2019 India April–May LS general elections and assembly elections of 2019

[Antonio the Sixth]

Jaichind, can you explain to us exactly why the "winning party's seat count keeps growing as the counting goes on" phenomenon occurs? That was clearly the case tonight, since early seat counts had UPA flipping 50 seats or so from the NDA, and almost all those flips evaporated as counting went on. I have no idea why that would happen, though. I could understand if the counting bias always favored the UPA early on and the NDA always grew as the night went on, but you seem to suggest that whatever party is winning will be underestimated early on, which I can't think of a mechanism for.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Thanks for the explanation, Jaichind. I'd never thought of it that way but it does make sense.

This should actually be one of the most interesting elections of 2019 (so far just behind Spain), its not everyday so see a country decide to unmake their system and reallign into a new era. its just not interesting from the birds eye view where India remains Orange. But this was an incredibly Bi-Polar election, with the unalligned/third-way blocks losing seats and votes to the big two blocks. The BJP was able to resist the traditionally negative caste/regional winds and give India truly national election for the first time in a long time. The INC was just playing an old game when the rules had already changed. But who knows if they will be able to reshape their brand in these next five years to reflect the new national system.

Yeah, whether one is happy with the result or not (I'm not, of course), it does display some fascinating trends and portends a lot of implications for the future of Indian politics. I'm looking forward to hearing more about those.

Oh, and I'll be having detailed maps on my twitter in the coming days, once everything is called and I can analyze states.

Please post them here too! I don't have Twitter but I'd like to follow along.