By Richard Rossow —

On March 7, the Election Commission of India announced the dates for the five states holding elections this year: Assam, Kerala, Pondicherry, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal. The elections will be held between April 4 and May 16, with the results of all five elections being released on May 19. These five states have a combined population of 229 million, a total larger than all but four countries. This point should be sufficiently significant as to warrant international attention. But there are other issues at stake that can have a broader impact on key political narratives in India, such as:

• Can the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) gain a powerful foothold in the northeast by winning Assam?
• Can the Congress Party defend either or both of the states it controls—Assam and Kerala?
• Will Kerala and Tamil Nadu stop their decades-long run of voting out sitting governments?
• Can the communist parties reemerge as a national political force?

These states send 51 representatives to the upper house, or Rajya Sabha, which is elected by state legislatures. A total of 24 of these seats will open up between now and the next national election in 2019, which could have a real impact on the Narendra Modi government’s ability to carry out a robust legislative agenda during this period.

The BJP has never controlled any of the “Seven Sister” states in Northeast India. The BJP won 7 of 14 Lok Sabha seats in the 2014 national election in Assam, a state that makes up around two-thirds of the total population of the northeast and shares a border with Bangladesh and Bhutan. This is easily the BJP’s best showing in a state-wide election in Assam; in recent years the BJP won 2 seats each in 1999 and 2004, 4 in the 2009 general elections to Lok Sabha, and 8, 10, and 5 seats in the past three elections to the state legislative assembly. In recent years the BJP has attempted to burnish its image in the northeast by strengthening cross-Bangladesh connectivity (critical to cut transit times between India’s mainland and the northeast), resolving border issues with Bangladesh, dealing with various dissatisfied groups in the northeast, and trying to expedite infrastructure developments in the region. Whether these actions will cement the BJP’s rise, as indicated with the 2014 Lok Sabha election, will be interesting to watch.

With the Congress Party’s recent “splintering” in Arunachal Pradesh, Congress and BJP control the same number of states, with eight apiece. This is relevant both in terms of each party’s ability to send members to the upper house of the Rajya Sabha, the ability to enact constitutional amendments (which need the concurrence of a majority of states), and the fact that states actually control most levers that impact the “ease of doing business” in India. If Congress loses either Kerala or Assam, it will fall below the BJP’s level of states under control for the first time since the BJP became a national party in the 1990s.

The term “anti-incumbency” is often applied to elections at any level in India, partly because most of India’s largest states rarely reelect a sitting government. Few states exemplify this anti-incumbency trend more fully than Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Tamil Nadu has not reelected a sitting government since 1984, and Kerala has not reelected a sitting government since 1982. At least in Tamil Nadu, there is a sense that Chief Minister S. Jayalalithaa from the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) party has managed to maintain her base of support that gave her party a clear majority in the 2011 state assembly election and nearly a clean sweep in the 2014 Parliament election (AIADMK won 37 of 38 seats in the state). Paired with the apparent disarray in the ranks of her main rival in Tamil Nadu, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), Ms. Jayalalithaa seems on pace to cruise to an electoral victory. But Congress’s position in Kerala is far less certain.

India’s communist parties have long held an outsized influence on national politics. This was particularly true in the 2004–2008 period when their “outside support” allowed the Congress Party to form the government following the 2004 national election. They used their influence to slow down the economic reform program, as well as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s strong inclination to engage with the United States on security issues. Today, the Communist Party has a hold on only one state, Tripura (where it has been in power since 1993), and has fewer than a dozen seats in the Lok Sabha. The communists have traditionally drawn their greatest strength in West Bengal and Kerala. While their chances to return to power in West Bengal—where they were unseated by the Trinamool Congress in 2011 after 34 years in power—appear limited, they may have some hope in Kerala.

Guessing the outcomes of elections is always a difficult task. Advance polls have not proven reliable, and even exit polls are rarely attuned with actual outcomes. But irrespective of the outcomes, these five state elections will help our understanding of India’s politics in the years to come in terms of the makeup of the Rajya Sabha, shaping our views about incumbent governments’ reelectability, and another mid-term assessment of the Congress Party.

Mr. Richard Rossow holds the Wadhwani Chair in U.S.-India Policy Studies at CSIS. Follow him on twitter @RichardRossow.