Whenever elections are announced in India, political analysts, psephologists, and journalists fan out to embark on a difficult and complex exercise: to read the mind of the voters. Politicians and election managers of political parties, who have at their disposal troves of data, specialised agencies and workers, also get on this journey. Unfortunately, more often than not, all of them fail to understand the electoral dynamics. They miss the wave or undercurrent because of a variety of reasons, the biggest being the confirmation bias.
It is never easy to call elections. Punjab, for instance, which was supposed to see a close contest between the AAP and the Congress, became a clean sweep for the former. Uttar Pradesh, where many believed the Samajwadi Party was locked in a fierce contest with the incumbent BJP, went the latter’s way by a comfortable majority even though the BJP lost more than fifty seats from its tally in the 2017 elections.
Political analysts, psephologists and journalists seldom admit that they missed the pulse. Opinion polls and exit polls, which are maligned for calling the elections wrongly, mostly get it right in terms of the direction. So even though most exit polls got the number of seats wrong, they did call it for the BJP in Uttar Pradesh.
After the results are out, the same people get down to analysing the numbers and drawing messages out of the mandate. For me, there are five key stories from the five states. One, the end of Mandal politics; two, the emergence of politics of welfarism; three, emergence of AAP as the natural successor to the space ceded by the Congress in the Opposition sphere; four, the reinforcement of Narendra Modi as the biggest vote puller in Indian politics; and five, almost the end of the road for the Congress.
In Uttar Pradesh, the BJP won because of the politics of State effectiveness, the politics of welfare delivery, the politics of polarisation, the politics of fear, the politics of organisation, and the politics of micro-caste management. The two biggest advantages for the party were the beneficiaries of the Central government’s welfare schemes, specifically the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana, and the law and order. Post result analysis shows that women, who are most affected by poor law and order situation, and benefit most by the food security welfare scheme, voted for the return of the BJP government in UP to make history. (It is for the first time in the state’s history that a chief minister has returned to power after completing the five-year term.)
The Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana was announced in March 2020 to provide food grains and pulses for free to the beneficiaries. The scheme, covering 80 crore poor people, was balm for those who had lost their livelihoods due to Covid. The scheme ran from April 2020 to November 2021. This and some other welfare schemes created a new vote bank: the labarthi (beneficiaries). Many of these beneficiaries, the poor, had traditionally been the voters of the BSP. When they shifted to BJP, the BSP performed its worst, getting less than 13% votes. Mayawati’s party had never got less than 19% in previous elections.
Welfare also worked for the SP. After president Akhilesh Yadav announced that his party will revoke the Old Pension Scheme (OPS) for the state government employees, employees threw their weight behind the party. This reflected in the postal ballots on the basis of which the SP led in 312 seats. (The election commission of India allowed four categories of people to cast their vote through ballot: people above 80 years, the disabled, Covid-19 patients and state government employees performing election duties.)
The BJP was aware of the anger of people against their legislators. This is reflected in the defeat of 44 of its sitting MLAs. The party tried to counter the anti-incumbency by fielding 104 new faces out of which 80 won. But we must not forget that in 53 constituencies, the winning margin has been less than 5,000 votes. Out of these 53, the BJP won 32 and the remaining went to the SP.
In Punjab, the AAP appeared to be on the right side of hope and therefore it swept the state. In Uttarakhand, the BJP won because the Congress was unable to capitalise on the political weaknesses and governance deficits of the incumbent government. In Goa, a fragmented opposition, careful seat-by-seat micromanagement, and the appeal of Narendra Modi saw the BJP through; and in Manipur, the politics of targeted state schemes worked in favour of the BJP.
The elections in five states have also established two very important facts: one, that the Congress’s decline is continuing, and two, that AAP is now occupying the space that the grand old party is ceding. After winning Punjab by a landslide, AAP now has the fourth highest number of MLAs in the country after the BJP, Congress, and the Trinamool Congress. The party is now aiming for Himachal Pradesh and Haryana, founder Arvind Kejriwal’s native state. AAP is very close to becoming a national party.
The Congress has only two chief ministers now – in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. In 2014, when the Modi phenomenon gripped the nation, Congress had nine CMs. It is facing an acute leadership crisis where no one is quite clear who calls the shots.
About the BSP, the less said the better.
