India, Nov. 14 -- When an alliance's two main constituents have a strike rate in excess of 80%, and it manages to get almost half of all votes polled (a vote share of 46.6%, 8.7-percentage points higher than the opposing grouping's), you get a result like the Bihar one, where the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) won (or was leading in, at 9:30 pm) 202 seats in the 243-member assembly. Such was the scale of victory - no grouping or party has ever won 46.6% of the popular vote in the state before - that the NDA kept building on its lead as counting continued through the day, eventually crossing the 200-seat mark.

Such landslide wins - and Bihar is definitely one - are the result of the winning side picking an issue that resonates with th...