On April 6, as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) marked it's 44th anniversary, the theme of its Foundation Day was "Phir Ek Baar Modi Sarkar" (once again, Modi government). It thus is an apt time to assess the party's prospects for the 2024 general elections and to see how strong its fort is going into the Lok Sabha polls.
In 2014, the BJP comprehensively defeated the Congress as it won 282 seats, and a 31% vote share. In the next Lok Sabha election, it surpassed this record with 303 seats and an even bigger vote share of 37%.
1. The Biggest Party Across All Regions
It is generally believed that the BJP is strong in the North and the West but weak in the East and the South zones. While that is true, the BJP is still the single largest party in all the four regions. It's because the latter two have many regional parties that have pockets of influence but are not united under a common banner.
The North and the West are strongholds of the BJP, where it won 155 out of 191 seats (81% strike rate) and 51 out of 78 seats (65% strike rate), respectively. However, in the East and South, the BJP's performance was weaker. It won less than 50% of the seats-67 out of 142- in the former, and only 25% seats-30 out of 132-in the latter. These two regions, especially states like West Bengal, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala, are the focus areas of the BJP in 2024.
2. Wide Winning Margins In 2019
In the 2019 elections, there were 224 seats that the BJP won with an over 50% vote share. Effectively, that means the party won around 75% of the total seats emphatically. In four states - Delhi, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, and Gujarat - the party won all its seats with a 50% or more vote share, while in six other states - Bihar, Karnataka, Assam, Rajasthan, Haryana, and Madhya Pradesh - three-fourths of its seats were won with more than half the total votes. In states like Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra too, nearly two-thirds of constituencies were like that, while in West Bengal, there were only a quarter. In Odisha, in contrast, which saw a triangular contest, there were no such seats where the BJP won with more than 50% votes.
The BJP secured victory margins of more than 1 lakh votes in 226 out of the total 303 seats it won. In 105 of these in fact, the victory margin exceeded 3 lakh votes. There were only 40 seats where the party's winning edge was less than 50,000 votes, and these are the seats that could be considered vulnerable or closely contested.
Also, out of the 224 seats that the BJP won with a 50% or more vote share, 153 were those where the main rival was Congress. In all, of the 190 direct contests in 2019 between the BJP and the Congress, the BJP won 175, and the Congress only 15. And 153 of these 175 seats were such where the BJP got more than half the votes. For another set of 185 seats where the BJP fought against regional parties, it won 128 seats.
That's not all. Even of the 101 seats where the BJP recorded 40%-50% votes, 79 went on to deliver a victory to the BJP, demonstrating that even a 40% vote share can guarantee a win in a multi-party contest under the first-past-the-post system. In contrast, the main challenger, the Congress, had just 19 seats that it could claim it won with over half the votes, and another 76 where it was led to victory with a 40-50% vote share.
3. A Large Pool Of 'Strong' Seats
There are 247 seats that the BJP won in both 2014 and 2019, and these can be classified as strong.
Based on historical trends, there are 95 seats that the BJP has won on the trot in the three last elections, and 167 that have been won twice in the last three polls. Thus, in total, the BJP faces good prospects in 262 seats. That's just 10 less than the magic mark of 272.
Further, the party was the runner-up in 72 seats in 2019, and in 17 of those, it had lost by a less than 5% margin. In 2019, the BJP lost 35 seats that it had won in the previous election; 20 of these were in its strongholds of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
4. Stronger Alliances Compared To 2019
This year, the BJP has tried to stitch up several alliances and has added partners like the Janata Dal (Secular) (JD-S) in Karnataka, the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) in Andhra Pradesh, the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) in Uttar Pradesh and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) in Maharashtra. As a whole, it seems the party's alliances this year in the four states - which cover 181 seats, a third of the Lok Sabha's strength - are stronger than those in 2019. '
5. Modi Card
Finally, with elections becoming increasingly presidential in style, Narendra Modi enjoys a big lead over Rahul Gandhi, who is not the official prime ministerial face of the INDIA bloc. Modi enjoys immense public trust and credibility going into his third term and many consider him the difference between victory and defeat for his party.
The numbers underscore the almost invincible nature of the BJP this election. Can the opposition upset that position?
(Amitabh Tiwari is a political strategist and commentator. In his earlier avatar, he was a corporate and investment banker)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author.