Watch the full video (above) of the discussion on ‘Making Sense of the December 11 Results’ featuring Gilles Verniers and Neelanjan Sircar, moderated by Yamini Aiyar, as part of the CPR-TCPD (Trivedi Centre for Political Data, Ashoka University) Dialogues on Indian Politics.

The state elections in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Telengana and Mizoram are the last electoral tests for before the 2019 general elections. What do these results say about the state of strength of both national parties? How does the Congress-TDP alliance prefigure future opposition alignment? What do we learn about the verdict returned by voters in the three Hindi belt states governed by the BJP? These were some of the questions that two elections experts – Neelanjan Sircar and Gilles Verniers – addressed by diving into the outcomes’ data.

Gilles Verniers is Assistant Professor of Political Science, Ashoka University and Co-Director of the Trivedi Centre for Political Data.

Neelanjan Sircar is Assistant Professor of Political Science, Ashoka University and Visiting Senior Fellow at CPR.

Yamini Aiyar is President and Chief Executive at CPR.

The question and answer session that followed can be accessed here.

About the CPR-TCPD Dialogues

This was the sixth event in the CPR-TCPD Dialogues on Indian Politics series, launched in a partnership between Centre for Policy Research and Trivedi Centre for Political Data (TPCD) at Ashoka University. This is a monthly event that brings together academicians, policy and political practitioners, and civil society actors to grapple with important social and political issues in India. It provides a forum for intellectually rigorous, non-partisan commentary to strengthen public discourse on politics in India. In these polarised times, debates on politics in India have tended to be increasingly noisy, blurring the lines between critical engagement and partisan endorsement. This dialogue series is an effort to carve out a space for critical, nuanced engagement to understand the changing dynamics of Indian political parties, the impact of new and emerging social movements and the use of new instruments of mobilisation in our polity.