State and national elections in India are followed by frenetic political analyses aimed at making sense of the verdicts. An oft-cited reason for electoral loss is a feeling of “anti-incumbency”, or the tendency among the people to vote out the ruling party. What exactly do analysts mean when they attribute a loss to anti-incumbency, and is holding power always a reliable indicator of losing it? If so, why? Rahul Verma, a political scientist and Fellow at New Delhi -based think tank Centre for Policy Research, speaks to The Indian Express about the concept. Why is anti-incumbency often suggested as a reason for an electoral loss? Is there a counterargument? The term gets thrown around without a proper explanation of why there was a sense of anti-incumbency among voters. In some ways, this has been a lazy explanation for when governments are removed from power. Unless the reasons for anti-incumbency are provided, as well as the scale of the phenomenon, we can’t clearly know its role.…