7. Future of JD(U): With Nitish Kumar having declared this to have been his ‘last’ election ( though JD-U leaders gave the spin that he meant the last election rally) and with no second line of leadership in sight, the future of the party hangs in balance, specially after the electoral drubbing and the back stabbing by the BJP in the election. Can the party survive without Nitish Kumar is the question.
8. Performance of the Congress: While INC won only 19 of the 70 seats its contested, with a strike rate of just 30% which is lower than RJD, BJP and JD(U), its vote share at 9.75% compares favourably to the vote shares of the other three parties, which contested twice as many seats. BJP polled 20% of the votes and JD(U) 15%. What is more, most of the additional 30 seats that the party contested were BJP strongholds, seats which BJP had not lost in the last three to four elections.
9. Local factors count: The three phases of polling in the state do not seem to have followed the same pattern. If the first phase went overwhelmingly in favour of Tejashwi Yadav-led alliance, the second phase gave marginally higher weightage to the NDA. In the third phase, however, the NDA was all over. Regional and local factors seem to have influenced the outcome differently in the three phases.
