Victory has hundred fathers, but defeat demands an equal number of scapegoats as well. Yesterday (11 December), the Congress party trounced the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, and Madhya Pradesh – three chief citadels of the Hindi heartland.

In Chhattisgarh, the BJP was reduced to only 15 seats in the 90-member house. The party was initially hoping to sail through with a comfortable majority. In Madhya Pradesh, it put up a valiant fight despite being in power for the last 15 years and won 109 seats compared to the Congress’ 114. Similarly, in Rajasthan, where political pundits had predicted a crushing defeat for the incumbent party, the BJP was able to reach a respectable figure of 73 seats compared to Congress’ 99.

Since the BJP supporters were expecting the contest to end on a 2-1 scoreline at worst, a 0-3 on the board has come as a rude awakening.

This has necessitated some answers as well as blame to go around. What emerged as the easiest target were anonymous voters who, in their infinite wisdom, chose to press the None of the Above (NOTA) option. “NOTA defeated the BJP” is the current consensus among the online electoral analysts. But is it true?

Since the BJP’s defeat in Chhattisgarh was decisive, we will skip this state and focus only on Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, where the contests were tight.

In Rajasthan, the BJP’s vote share stood at 38.8 per cent, only 0.5 percentage points lower than the Congress’. Here, NOTA’s vote share was 1.3 per cent. If we add this to the BJP’s kitty in toto, the BJP gets ahead of the Congress by 0.8 per cent. This appears significant, but the devil is in the details. There were 18 seats in Rajasthan where the margin of loss was less than 3,000 votes. Of these, the BJP lost eight and won 10. Of the 8 seats lost, NOTA votes were more than the margin of the BJP’s loss in seven seats. Let’s introduce the Chohtan assembly result into the mix, too, where though the margin of BJP’s loss was more than 3,000 votes (4,262), NOTA votes were even higher (5,391).

Now, even if we transfer all NOTA votes to the BJP, it wins eight more than its current tally of 73, taking the score to 81. While this brings the Congress tally down to 90, it still remains well ahead.