  We analyse the Bihar assembly elections of 2020, and find that poverty was
the key driving factor, over and above female voters as determinants. The
results show that the poor were more likely to support the NDA. The relevance
of this result for an election held in the midst of a pandemic, is very
crucial, given that the poor were the hardest hit. Secondly, in contrast to
conventional commentary, the empirical results show that the AIMIM-factor and
the LJP-factor hurt the NDA while benefitting the MGB, with their presence in
these elections. The methodological novelty in this paper is combining
elections data with wealth index data to study the effect of poverty on
elections outcomes.
