Because, in the recent Bihar state election, a sizeable number of BJP voters switched loyalties. The BJP faced the ire of voters in Bihar who seemed entirely oblivious to our PM’s rise up the charts of Forbes’s list of the ‘World’s Most Powerful People’. BJP spokespersons and supporters wax eloquent about the “index of opposition unity” and alliance arithmetic of the Grand Alliance as the sole protagonists. That argument completely misses the point that there were a significant percentage of erstwhile BJP voters who deserted the party in the current Bihar election. There were 19 million voters across 129 constituencies in Bihar (where the BJP had served up candidates in both 2014 and 2015 elections). Of these, 7.8 million chose the BJP over all the other parties in 2014. In the 2015 election, only 7 million voted for the BJP in these constituencies. Thus, nearly 8 lakh BJP voters from 2014 changed loyalties in 2015. Whether the opposition was united or not is irrelevant here, since voters had the exact same choices in 2014 and chose the opposite. This represents a voteshare decline of some four per cent, a significant swing in 18 months, while it’s common to experience five per cent anti-incumbency swings after five years! The BJP lost voteshare in 90 of these 129 constituencies, indicating widespread disenchantment. Using census data, we ranked districts in Bihar according to a URL index that we computed—urban, rich and literate. We then mapped electoral data and census data to glean insights from these shifting voting patterns for the BJP in Bihar. This analysis relies entirely on voteshare since that is a direct manifestation of the average voter’s choices than seat shares. Patna has the highest URL. Here, the BJP had a 3.5 per cent loss in voteshare. In Banka district, which ranks among the lowest in the URL index, the BJP gained 6.3 per cent voteshare compared to its performance in the 2014 elections. The BJP lost more votes in urban, rich and literate districts than in other districts. It lost more votes in districts with greater percentage of youth than the rest, and in districts with the least Muslim population than in districts with many Muslims.