Prashant Kishor: X-Factor, Spoiler Or An Also-Ran? A Breakdown

So, it's clear that Kishor and the Jan Suraaj will be a factor, but can he be the X-factor for the Bihar elections? And how much of an impact will he really have?

In an election special, Bihar Battleground, on Tuesday, NDTV CEO and Editor-in-Chief Rahul Kanwal spoke to psephologists, experts and political leaders to analyse exactly this, and dissected the Kishor factor through number-crunching.

Data reveals that a meaningful conversion of votes to seats at the state level in Bihar will happen if a party manages to get 8% of the vote share. A 15% vote share, data suggests, can lead to 25 or more seats for Jan Suraaj and 18% can mean 40 or more seats. So, a vote share of 18% would mean that Kishor and Jan Suraaj would have a very significant impact, ending up with over 15% of the state's 243 Assembly seats.

A war-gaming of scenarios shows that if Prashant Kishor gets 12% of the vote share but takes only 20% of that from the NDA and 80% from the Mahagathbandhan, the JDU-BJP alliance will end up with 199 seats, based on the 2020 performance, while the RJD-Congress coalition will be left with just 30