Analysis on the 2014 Lok Sabha Election results

Let me start by saying that only Chanakya got the election results spot on, who many people including yours truly thought were predicting a way over optimistic seat tally for BJP & its allies. Everyone felt that BJP was going to be the single largest party & the combined NDA seat tally would be hovering somewhere close to the 272 half way mark. But very few expected such a huge landslide for the BJP & NDA, including a majority in parliament for BJP just by itself. Almost all full time psephologists & also a part timer like me got it wrong with our predictions. I believe healthy dose skepticism prevailed after the overestimation of seat count for BJP/NDA in exit polls for the previous 2 general elections (in 2004 & 2009) which contributed to an underestimation this time around.

Before I got into my analysis here is a fascinating summary for the two main national parties from past 2 elections.

2009 BJP vote share (19%) Seats 116, Congress vote share (29%) Seats 206

2014 BJP vote share (31%) Seats 282, Congress vote share (19%) Seats 44

This might be the most head scratching piece of information from this election. How does one party win 116 seats with 19% vote share & while another wins only 44. Also one party wins 206 seats with 29% vote share while another one with just an extra 2% gets a majority on its own. One might quickly dismiss these facts as quirky due to the fact that Congress derives its vote share from all states while BJP is mostly concentrated in north, central & west India.  Furthermore with 38.5% of vote NDA at 336 seats & BJP with 31% of vote with 282 seats is the smallest vote share a majority government has gotten in history of India. This numbers has lead BJP & Modi detractors to doubts the existence of a Modi wave in this election throwing out statements saying “that 6 out of every 10 people in India didn’t vote for BJP or its ally”. But I believe this is an over simplification of the Indian electoral system. There was an existence of a Modi wave which I will explain over the course of my blog.

The main factors for the BJP landslide in addition to the no brainer 12% rise in BJP vote share are the 1) First past the post electoral (FPP) system & 2) Regional coalition partners 3) Campaign style & voter mindset

FPP & coalition partners are kind of inter twined & I will go into the detail about the first past the post electoral system later on but first on coalition partners. In addition to the existing coalition partners from previous election campaigns, Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) in Punjab & Shiv Sena in Maharashtra, BJP & Modi stitched up new coalition partners in several states including TDP (Chandrababu Naidu) in Andhra Pradesh, LJP (Ram Vilas Paswan), Upendra Kushwaha’s RLSP & Apna Dal in Uttar Pradesh. BJP even opened its account in Tamil Nadu by forging an alliance with a combination of 3 small Dravidian regional parties.  In contrast Congress lost few of its alliance partners from UPA-II & didn’t have any allies in many states especially in South India. DMK broke its alliance with Congress which decimated the Congress in Tamil Nadu. They couldn’t even forge an alliance with TRS who would seem a natural partner in Telangana especially after spending so much political capital on simply forming a new state to retain a few seats in Telangana.

The first past the post (FPP) electoral system is where the candidate with simply the most votes wins his constituency no matter what his vote share is. Many other countries use a proportional system where the seats are assigned per state/region/province based on vote share across entire geographical area versus a localized constituency. In first past the post (FPP) system if there is a four cornered fight one could theoretically win by just getting 25.01% of the vote share in each constituency while in proportional fare system one would just get over 25% of seats in the entire region . One can debate all day long the pros & cons of the first past the post versus proportional representation system which might benefit some versus other parties. Many people that have railed against this system that has provided BJP with the high seat share for the vote share that they have gotten have conveniently forgotten that this is the exact system that Congress benefited from for several elections since independence. Next I am going to break down the states in 2 distinct categories: 1) Bipolar Head to head contests 2) Multi party contests.

In states where there is a straight contest between 2 major parties & the vote share difference between both parties starts creeping into the double digit percentage range, you start getting landslide victories for majority party. Gujarat (20%) Rajasthan (17%) MP (19%) saw either complete sweeps or near sweeps for BJP. Likewise is the case for other states such as Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Goa etc. where BJP by simply picking up the vote share lost by Congress, won nearly all the seats in these states.

In multi cornered fight states a much smaller vote % difference leads to dramatic landslides as the vote gets split amongst various parties. In this type of states where BJP either doesn’t have a big presence or is looking to increase its seat tally, by getting the right alliances BJP scored big. In AP the difference in vote share between Naidu’s TDP & Jagmohan Reddy’s YSRC is less than a percentage point. But when you add the 8% BJP provided TDP in a multi cornered contest with Congress & TRS you get a majority of seats going to TDP/BJP combine versus YSRC. Ditto is the case for UP & Bihar but with a different angle. For long BJP had been described as a party of upper caste Brahmins & baniyas. Over the years BJP has always struggled to gain support of lower caste voters who have instead coalesced with the many regional leaders in these states. OBC’s make up 54% & 39% of the population in Bihar & UP respectively. With negligible support from minorities , for BJP to do well in these states the electoral dynamics dictate they get support from a broad range of Hindus not just the upper castes. Many opposition figures & liberals have blamed solely the Muzzafarnagar riots & post polarization as the main reason that BJP did so well in UP this time around. This is another one of the classic over simplification myths of this election. Modi no doubt with his clean image & plank of development during the campaign trail pulled several voters towards BJP but he also pulled out the caste card (referring himself to as an OBC) during a few rallies in UP hoping to connect in the heavily caste dominated constituencies of UP. His master strategist Amit Shah also offered 25-27 tickets to OBC’s in UP which incidentally was more than Mayawati, a self-proclaimed champion of backwards castes. BJP formed an alliance with the Apna Dal, a party of Kurmis, a backward caste luring in more OBC voters. Mayawati towards the end of her campaign felt the backward caste vote slipping from her & started to attack Modi vigorously, even asking Modi to prove his OBC credentials. All these above factors contributed to an astounding vote share of 42% & factoring in a 20% difference to the next biggest vote share in a 4 way contest, BJP swept UP. The only 7/80 seats that they lost were pocket boroughs of either Congress (Rahul Gandhi & Sonia Gandhi) & Samajwadi Party (Mulayam (2 seats), Mulayam’s 2 nephews & daughter in law). A hypothetical tie of up of any 2 of the 3 in UP between Congress, Mayawati & Mulayam might have checked BJP to a large extent. In Bihar BJP aligned with 2 backward caste leaders Ram Vilas Paswan’s LJP & the Upendra Kushwaha’s RLSP  (even I hadn’t heard of him before this election) to strengthen their pull among the OBC & EBC’s in Bihar. This successfully neutralized the Congress-Lalu axis. Most surprising factor has been the complete decimation of Nitish Kumar in this election. Congress & RJD combined got 1 percent less vote share than BJP itself. Bringing in the extra 9% from LJP & RLSP helped BJP alliance come out on top in 31/40 seats. Looking at the past several Lok Sabha elections Ram Vilas Paswan always ends up on the winning side. Maybe he is the true “bellweather” of Bihar politics. The joke floating around now a days is that to predict Bihar just look at whose side Paswan is on. Thus BJP in addition to picking up the majority  of the votes that Congress lost in these states , plus a little from regional parties in addition to smart regional tie ups did very well also in mulit cornered contests.

AAP was considered the X factor for this election. AAP looked like harming the BJP’s chances back in December when the Delhi assembly election results were declared. Back then they had a lot of momentum in terms of enthusiasm & party enrollment. Kejriwal initially targeted the Congress before December but later on thinking that Congress was a spent force in this election turned his attention solely on BJP. Kejriwal’s regular rants many of them lunatic in nature made many urban middle class voters rethink about supporting AAP. He self-destructed as the campaign wore on while Modi grew in strength. In addition to their declining support day by day they spread their resources too thin across the country as they contested in more constituencies than either BJP or Congress. It is no surprise that they lost deposits in 413 of 432 seats they contested. In spate of few months AAP went from a serous potential challenger to BJP to anti-BJP vote spoiler. There was no dearth of options against BJP to start with & AAP further fragmented the anti-BJP vote which in multi part contest always helps out the party with the biggest vote share.

Third point is the campaign style & mindset of the voter. Congress never had clear vision on how to project itself or how to counteract Modi. It was always on defensive from beginning. They seriously bungled its regional alliance tie ups. Call it sheer stupidity or arrogance of the Congress high command who thought that they could do well without any major partners in many states including none in south India. They almost began the election campaign with a defeatist attitude as if they had given up knowing they were going to lose. They firmly believed that NDA would be checked by regional parties & AAP ,falling short of majority & unable to partners post-election to form the next government. Hence Congress will support a Third Front government from the outside for few years till they recover from the mess of UPA-II & collapse the Third Front government when they are strong again. By the time they woke up to reality they were so far behind & resorted to personal attacks on Modi which he is a master of deflecting to his own advantage like he has done in previous Gujarat elections. Anyone remember “Maut ka saudagar”? Congress was busier blasting the “Gujarat model” instead of positively projecting their government’s achievements. Congress neither could successfully highlight its welfare programs that it enacted over last 10 years nor shake off the tag of corruption associated with its government. Not only Congress but also several regional parties focused on attacking Modi for 2002 riots & spreading fear among minorities. But today’s electorate is different from what it used to be in the past. With India’s median age around 25 years & 2/3 of population under the age of 35, political parties need to calibrate their message towards the youth of this nation. Shekhar Gupta from Indian Express rightly pointed out that for today’s youth this is not the Congress party of their fathers & grandfathers with whom they have a sense of loyalty to vote for as their forefathers once did. The economic reforms that Manmohan Singh implemented in 1991 uplifted millions of families out of poverty over last 20+ years, but today’s youth are not satisfied with those gains & have become more aspirational. Manmohan might have been blamed for the state Congress is in today by actions of his over past 5 years as PM, but I believe he unleashed a “sleeping giant” 20 years ago that the Congress party is facing the anger of today. The youth see price rise, economic stagnation, lack of job growth & corruption all as obstacles to their upward mobility & worry to a lesser extent about caste & religion.  Today the world is much more connected & they see development & growth in other places which they can compare against. In the past political parties in lesser developed areas might get away with fooling people as they had no idea of the development in other parts of the country. The 10% increase in overall voter turnout was borne partly out of frustration at way the things are today. Modi from day one of the campaign has focused his entire poll pitch on positive points i.e. growth & development agenda. Modi has successfully appealed to their aspirations & decisively won them over in this election. Congress is still stuck in the mentality of welfare & dole outs. Today’s youth is not asking how much free stuff they can get but what have you done for me lately to improve my life & how can the overall standard of his living be improved. With rising literacy levels & increasing youth population this problem is going to become more pronounced in every successive election for parties stuck in this old mindset.

With Modi’s development politics, religious, caste & minority appeasement politics though not eliminated completely has been marginalized to a large extent. In addition this has proven that the negative style of campaign doesn’t resonate anymore with today’s voter (personal attacks & fear mongering). There has to be some serious soul searching for various regional satarps like Mulayam, Mayawati, Lalu Prasad etc. on the path forward for them. Unless they change their mindset & focus on good governance versus vote bank politics they face becoming non relevant in the near future. Modi surely has given them several sleepless nights but several of them still appear in denial mode judging from the post poll statements coming from them. Many of them might start doing the unthinkable & forming alliances with sworn enemies just to keep BJP at bay. I hoped that they wouldn’t put their head in the sand & take this easy way out. But unfortunately Nitish Kumar instead of continuing his good governance has overreacted & joined hands with his onetime arch enemy Lalu against whose misrule he railed against 9 years ago. Congress also ran a rudderless campaign with no idea on how to reach out to the electorate. Sonia Gandhi prefers to stay in background & Rahul Gandhi is always reluctant to lead by example, be it being a minister in UPA, debating in parliament or being announced as a PM candidate. Congress being decimated to less than half of their worst ever tally should make Congress introspect hard at the decisions they took in UPA-II & in election campaign. There already has been lot of finger pointing since the results were declared & almost everyone is totally dissatisfied with Rahul Gandhi and/or his advisors. This truly has been a transcendent election where after 30 years in Indian politics a single party has enough seats to form government on its own.  Modi was the man of the match of this election as he single handedly carried the BJP from the doldrums for the past 10 years to victory. Rajnath Singh can’t get enough credit when 8 months ago he stood up to the senior leaders in BJP like LK Advani, Sushma Swaraj & Murli Manohar Joshi to make Modi the PM candidate despite their stiff opposition. Many Modi & BJP detractors including opposition leaders will quibble about the 31% national vote share showing a Modi wave but the sweep in majority of states across the country does show that there was indeed a Modi wave. I will further use two more statistics to strengthen the theory of Modi wave. Chattisgardh, where elections are won & lost by razor thin margin of 1% vote share difference, BJP had a 10% vote share difference. In Maharashtra BJP had 27% vote share versus 20% for Shiv Sena. I can’t imagine without a true Modi wave BJP getting more votes than Shiv Sena in Maharashtra. It would be foolish for such people to look at a high national vote share corresponding to a Modi wave as that seems pretty impossible in a country as big & diverse as India for any party to get. Modi has with his persona & shrewd alliances have maximizing the BJP’s seat count in multiple states is itself an amazing achievement. This ensures a stable government for next 5 years not dependent of whims of few coalition partners. This thumping majority will give him a free hand to reform & grow the India economy. If he delivers on his promises he could usher in a golden age for India. This also will brighten the prospects of BJP in several upcoming elections for which he has shrewdly kept Amit Shah out of the central cabinet.