The wave in favour of the BJP in the coming Assembly Elections in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh is clear. The question is: what impact will this vote shift towards the BJP have on the General Elections next year?
To find out, the estimates made by CNN-IBN, The Week and CSDS Pre-Poll survey in these three states and in Delhi - where a hung Assembly is likely - for the Assembly Elections were projected across the Parliamentary constituencies in these states. And the outcome shows that the BJP's star is very much in the ascendance.
Of the 72 Parliamentary constituencies in these four states, the BJP is likely to bag as many as 57 seats. That's 27 seats more than it won in the 2009 elections, and 15 more than it was projected to win in July 2013, when the same opinion poll was conducted the previous time.
As for the Congress, its tally is projected to drop by 28 seats, from 40 in 2009 to just 12. This is 15 seats less than the 27 predicted by the survey in July this year.
While this makes the picture very clear in these four states, what impact will it have on the overall tally of the UPA and the NDA in next year's general elections? Since the opinion polls do not cover the remaining 471 of India's 543 Parliamentary constituencies, it isn't really possible to make a prediction.
What if the positions in the other states did not change substantially? This is a theoretical supposition, but it still throws up some significant findings. What it shows is that the NDA's tally could grow from 159 in 2009 to between 187 and 195 in the coming elections. That's up from the level of 172-180 projected in July this year.
Correspondingly, the UPA could drop from 262 in 2009 to between 134 and 142 in next year's elections, signifying a much sharper drop. Some of this loss is likely to accrue to the BJP, but the rest of it is all set to go to the other parties, whose collective position could rise from just 122 in 2009 to somewhere between 208 and 216 in next year's elections, which is about the same level projected in July.
At the party level, this will translate into a jump for the BJP from 116 seats in 2009 to between 171 and 179 seats in 2013, up from the 156-164 range projected in July 2013. As for the Congress, its tally may drop sharply from 206 to somewhere between 116 and 124, down even further from the 131-139 range projected in July.
Of course, this isn't a prediction but an exercise. The actual voting in the other states of India will be impacted by many factors. The six key questions from the other states on which the fate of the next elections hinges:
1. Will Narendra Modi and the BJP be able to sustain their momentum in the key battleground of Uttar Pradesh against Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mayawati?
2. Will the Congress go in for a pre-poll alliance in Bihar with either Nitish Kumar or Lalu Yadav?
3. Will the Telangana decision alter the equations in Andhra Pradesh?
4. Will fresh alliances emerge in Tamil Nadu?
5. Will Raj Thackeray be a potential spoiler for the big players in Maharashtra?
The battle has barely begun.
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