The narrative has certainly come off the rails. That seemed obvious as results came in Tuesday for three Lok Sabha and 33 assembly constituencies spread across nine states that had by-elections on Saturday. Most of these assembly seats had come open because the people who held them had been voted to the Lok Sabha.By early Tuesday evening, the Samajwadi Party had managed to wrest back from the Bharatiya Janata Party seven of 11 assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh for which bypolls had been held, and was leading in one more. In BJP-controlled Rajasthan, the party only retained one of four seats that had gone to the polls, with the other three going to the Congress. Even in Modi's home state of Gujarat, the Congress managed to take home three of nine seats that were up for grabs, with the rest going to the saffron party.These results came after a grand anti-Modi alliance managed to stand in the way of the BJP's advance in Bihar last month, with Modi's party only winning eight out of 18 seats there.It might be true that the results of assembly by-polls reflect local factors and involve much lower turnouts than general elections. But if the elections to a student union in Delhi University can be credited to a Modi wave, it's hard not to question why the results of by-polls in Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat have not been carried forward by the same sentiment.Yet the Modi wave might still be gathering steam. Most analysts expect a strong showing from the BJP in the upcoming state elections, beginning with Maharashtra and Haryana. Only if the saffron wave shows signs of subsiding in these polls could anyone begin to conclude that the Modi effect is waning.

The BJP does have organisational concerns in UP, especially if it is looking to capture the state when it goes to the polls in a couple of years. Yogi Adityanath, who took over the campaigning reins from BJP president Amit Shah, will have to explain the results in UP, where the National Democratic Alliance lost nine out of 11 seats that it had previously held.But by-polls have always been partly administrative affairs ‒ the government ruling the state could potentially have a much larger influence over the turnout as well as the voting. An analysis by CSDS-Lokniti researchers looking at 1,100 by-elections between 1967 and 2012 suggested that outcomes to these polls are heavily skewed in favour of the government in charge of the state. “When incumbent parties in the state and at the Centre are different, the incumbent party in the state is twice as likely to win a bypoll seat,” write Rahul Verma and Pranav Gupta.In Uttar Pradesh, the Samajwadi Party, which picked up eight seats from the BJP and its local ally, the Apna Dal, has a commanding majority in the assembly.Even though the BJP managed to win a whopping, unprecedented 71 seats in the UP during the general elections, the SP was still twice as likely to win these by-elections. The decision of the Bahujan Samaj Party to stay away from the elections also makes the situation more complex.The CSDS data goes on to suggest that by-poll elections are not accurate indicators of incumbency sentiment at the state level, which means it’s hard to draw conclusions about the Samajwadi Party's supposed resurgence. “Our analysis shows that the winner of a by-election has less than half a chance of winning the next assembly elections in the state,” the researchers wrote.While the UP results might puncture the narrative about the Modi wave, data from previous by-polls suggests that this was the most likely outcome and that it cannot be extrapolated to suggest that the Samajwadi Party is again in a commanding position.Considering the same factors ‒ the ability of state government to influence outcomes ‒ the BJP’s success in picking up its first seat in West Bengal in 15 years should come as a real boost there.

The same factors that means that the BJP shouldn’t be terribly worried about UP are exactly why it should take note of the vote against the party in Gujarat and Rajasthan. The BJP is firmly in control of both of those governments and managed to sweep these states during the Lok Sabha elections.But on Tuesday, the Congress managed to wrest three assembly seats out of the BJP’s control in Modi's home state of Gujarat, even though the party itself still appears to be in somewhat of disarray. In Vasundhara Raje’s Rajasthan, which is making an attempt to become the “next Gujarat” through innovative policies, the Congress won three of the four by-election seats.Going by the general by-poll data, it is in these states, where the BJP has a firm hold on the state administration, that the results should trouble the saffron party the most.