The BJP retained Assam and Puducherry while Opposition governments suffered heavy defeats in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. The results sharpened focus on how incumbency, welfare delivery and organisation shaped these state contests.
Bihar's 2025 verdict signalled a major shift, with weakening caste loyalties, broader social representation, and voters increasingly prioritising development, welfare, and governance over traditional identity-based politics.
Bihar elections: The people of Bihar perceive the elections to be a close battle between the NDA and the Mahagathbandhan. Here is an analysis of which parties are in form and who are lacking a purple patch.
Political parties have largely abandoned the idea of proportional representation based on Bihar's caste survey, instead allocating tickets to consolidate their core vote banks.
Women voters in Bihar, prioritising safety, education, and welfare, have become decisive in elections, often outnumbering men at the polls. Cash transfers and targeted schemes by parties have made women's votes a key factor in determining outcomes.
Bihar's political battleground remains finely balanced — the NDA holds an edge with strongholds in the north, but shifting voter sentiment and key swing seats could still tip the scales for the Mahagathbandhan.
North Bihar has 58 per cent of the seats. More than 70 per cent of the Muslim population of the state resides here. About 46 per cent of Purnea's population is Muslim. In Tirhut and Darbhanga, the Muslim population is equal to the state average of around 18 per cent. This makes North Bihar a polarisation hotbed.
Rahul Gandhi's outreach to Bihar's Extremely Backward Classes challenges Nitish Kumar's long-held base. With 36% of the population, EBCs could decide whether the Mahagathbandhan gains ground or faces scepticism.
Caste continues to dominate Bihar politics, with five groups holding most Assembly seats. Despite calls for development-led change, surveys show a majority still prefer leaders from their own caste.
Travelling 2,000 km across Bihar's nine zones revealed a complex political mood where entrenched caste loyalties, corruption concerns, and hyperlocal factors shape November's Assembly elections, leaving voters torn between change and continuity.
Despite being the single largest party in the 2015 and 2020 polls, the chief minister's post remains out of reach for RJD. The party now faces the challenge of expanding beyond its Muslim-Yadav base to attract non-Yadav OBCs, EBCs, Dalits, and upper castes.
Can Prashant Kishor's Jan Suraaj Party change Bihar 2025's outcome and who will lose more, the NDA, the INDIA bloc, or both in this battle?
Will Uddhav and Raj Thackeray now join hands to take on the BJP and Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena in the upcoming BMC elections? Posters across Mumbai seem to be urging the two to unite to claim Bal Thackeray's legacy.
Speculation mounts over Chirag Paswan's assembly ambitions as Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) seeks strategic leverage ahead of the Vidhan Sabha polls.
The Bharatiya Janata Party-led Centre has announced it will conduct a caste census in a decision that has surprised the Opposition and political analysts.
The caste survey was conducted by the previous Congress government in 2015, and Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has been under pressure to release the findings.
Tamil Nadu used to alternate between the DMK and the AIADMK. Then, the latter bucked the trend in 2016. The BJP-AIADMK alliance hopes to take advantage of this - and natural anti-incumbency - and challenge MK Stalin.
Prashant Kishor is attempting to convert a caste-based election into a class-based one. He's been highlighting the lack of development in the last 35 years under Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad Yadav.
Despite the JD(U)'s lacklustre performance and the Opposition's claims that its leader is mentally unfit, Nitish Kumar, at 74, remains the central force in Bihar politics.
After 10 years, Delhi has voted out the AAP as voters backed the BJP's double-engine government narrative. Here's how a decade of split-voting came to an end.
