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    ISAS Briefs

    Quick analytical responses to occurrences in South Asia

    303 : Madhya Pradesh State Polls in India: ‘Anti-Incumbency’ No Longer Applies?

    Ronojoy Sen is Senior Research Fellow at the ISAS, Robin Jeffrey is Visiting Research Professor at ISAS

    27 November 2013

    Elections in Madhya Pradesh (MP), one of the five Indian states going to the polls in November and December 2013, test conventional wisdom about Indian state elections – that governments seldom get re-elected. “The anti-incumbency factor” has been a commonplace of Indian electoral analysis for thirty years. But over the past few years, incumbents with healthy records in office are winning re-election.