How many voters can the BJP lose while still winning the election?
New Delhi:
The BJP won the last UP election in a landslide. A victory by such a large margin that many, if not most, observers felt that it could not be surpassed by the opponent. Polls forecast that although the BJP could lose 100 seats (from 325 to 225 out of 403 in UP), it would still win with a clear majority.
Figure 1
This is clearly a solid, insurmountable foundation – but is it unprecedented? Not quite, because UP is always an unstable state. The average win rate in all UP elections since 1997 is just below the BJP that landed in 2017 (see figure 2).
Figure 2
In fact, the UP has seen the ruling party vote in every election since 1996 – five elections and five ruling party changes.
Figure 3
However, the BJP had a distinct advantage when it came up against this election – The opposition was so divided that the BJP was able to survive a larger-than-usual popular vote (see Figure 4). Faced with a near-unified Opposition, the BJP would lose by a 5% margin, but with the Opposition divided in its current way, the pivot away from the BJP would need to be significantly higher. So how many voters can the BJP lose while still winning the election?
Figure 4
However, although this large swing was necessary for the BJP to lose this election, there is concern in the BJP that this large swing is not uncommon in UP. In fact, BJP support in the last election in 2017 from 2012 was 26% (see figure 5) and it increased from 47 seats to 325 seats.
Figure 5
The good news for the BJP is that it can afford to drop a large portion of that one-off gain and still hold power.
Further unsettling in the BJP is that despite a record 52% of the vote in the Lok Sabha election, the share of the vote in the National Assembly election fell sharply (see Figure 6) compared to the Lok Sabha election. This drop used to be around 14%, but over the past few years – before and after the Lok Sabha elections in 2019 – the BJP has fallen by 21% in the 10 council elections held a year before and since the election. Lok Sabha.
Figure 6
If this pattern is repeated in the UP, the BJP vote will drop to 30.5% in these elections – down -10% from the current 41.5% it won in 2017 – a change that will damage the party.
The bottom line for the BJP, however, is that it has entered the fray in this election with a near-unprecedented fundamental vote coupled with a massive win rate due to the deeply divided Opposition. The problem it faces is that the state has gone through a deep financial crisis because of Covid – it doesn’t really matter if the BJP handles Covid well or not, people have suffered a lot. Coupled with a rise in prices – again, it doesn’t matter if it’s the result of external factors (like rising oil prices) – this has created anger among the population, and less government. have historically tried to stem the swings away from these crises. The main goal of the BJP is to prevent the swing from going further than 7% – as more than that means it can lose power.
