Despite higher anti-incumbency sentiments generated by a decade under the same government, the Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance is still likely to return to power thanks to its continued strength in northern states, according to the analysis in a report.
According to a report by 'Jefferies', a prominent brokerage house, NDA is likely to win the elections 251-300 seats as against nearly 330 now, as recent opposition unity will have 'limited impact'.
The report titled' India Politics- The Election Playbook' also listed out the key risk factors such as anti-incumbency, and small vote share swings causing a large impact on outcomes and the 2004 election. example.
INDIA alliance
A total of 26 opposition parties in India have come together to form the INDIA alliance to take on the BJP for the 2024 elections. These opposition parties run governments in 11 states, which account for 40% of the total population.
Jefferies, in a hypothetical exercise, assumes that only one candidate from all these parties in any constituency and assuming 100% vote transfer amongst these parties' basis 2019 outcome,
The alliance could win 20 more out of 543 national seats, taking its total to 180. It also notes that six key parties (YSRCP, TDP, BJD, BSP, JDS & ADMK) are not a part of this coalition with a cumulative tally of 49 seats. Several of them can possibly tilt towards BJP’s coalition (NDA) if need be.
The Yogi-Modi factor
Another key aspect of BJP’s strength is the geographically concentrated nature of its support.
India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, continues to be the politically most important state for the BJP. The BJP is on a strong footing in the state thanks to the popularity of its Chief Minister in the state Yogi Adityanath, pointed out the report.
Indeed, under Yogi, the BJP became the first party to come back to power in UP in 2022 after a gap of 37 years. Yogi’s image in the state has often drawn comparisons to Modi’s rise in Gujarat in the 90s/00s.
The BJP’s origin in the 80s and 90s has predominantly been from the ‘Hindi heartland’ states of North and Central India.
Significant attempts have been made over the last decade to broaden its presence in regions with a relatively weaker presence – the South Indian and Eastern Indian states.
The party did see a modestly improved outcome in 2019 with the Top-10 states accounting for 80.5% of its seats tally (244 out of 303) vs. 85% (240 out of 282) in the 2014 elections. But it continues to be an outfit that gets its seats primarily from North India.
Social media
As per a recent report from Redseer Strategy Consultants, Indians spend almost 7.3 hours per day on their smartphones which is the highest in the world, the report noted. There are 833m internet users as of Dec '22 which is nearly 80% of the adult population (15+) and 40% higher than last general election.
More importantly, the internet quality has improved significantly, with nearly 800m of these users with 3G/4G data access compared to 540m in 2019, which can be used for data intensive purposes such as video streaming.
Social Media usage is the highest in India with almost 585mn registered users of WhatsApp and 315m users of Facebook. This sudden surge of social media use in India is likely to have a significant impact on next year’s election. As any news/messages can travel swiftly over social media, it can be used both positively or negatively to influence the voters.
While the above factors are largely seen favouring the incumbent government, there are also several factors that add an element of uncertainty to the outcome, Jefferies noted.
New Voters
The upcoming election will see a large number of young voters — people who started voting only in 2014 or later. Jefferies estimates their number at 25.5 crore – or about 28% of the total electorate.
The report states that while their tendencies remain untested, certain emotive issues like the cross-border conflicts, Ram Temple issues etc. can have an impact on the election outcome
Hidden anti-incumbency
Another factor is undetected anti-incumbency against the ruling formation, as was the case 20 years ago.
BJP-led coalition, NDA was expected to win the 2004 national elections. The then BJP leader and prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was quite a popular political leader and had brought several reforms in privatization, private sector participation in infrastructure, thrust on improving roads infrastructure, stock market-friendly measures like reducing long-term capital gains tax on equities to zero etc.
In many ways, his policies led to solid economic growth beyond 2004. The market did not anticipate NDA’s defeat in the 2004 elections. The opinion polls indicated that the incumbent BJP would claim victory with a repeat mandate. But the Congress party joined hands with left-wing partners to put together a comfortable majority of more than 335 seats out of a total of 543 Lok Sabha seats.
Weak rural economy
The relatively weak rural economy could become a campaign point for the opposition, Jefferies noted, pointing out that rural wage growth over the last several years has trended close to or below inflation.
Meanwhile, the government has also given low hikes to the Minimum Support Prices (MSPs) for key crops that are procured by the government such as wheat and rice.
Another possible campaign issue seen recently is the relatively high inflation, particularly post-COVID. While the Modi-1 government did well to bring inflation down from 10% to 4%, the same has risen and is currently at 7.4% - which is seen hurting the urban poor disproportionately.
State elections
A ‘semi-final’ for the 2024 elections will be played out in November-Dec’23 when elections
to five states are held. These 5 states together account for 15% of the lower house seats and are thus significant. In 3 of the states that is Chhattisgarh, MP and Rajasthan, the BJP is in a direct contest against the Congress.
The Telangana state will likely see a three-cornered fight between the ruling BRS and the opposition Congress and BJP.
Mizoram, though small politically, will also be seen as a signal to BJP’s North Eastern dominance given the recent spate of violence in neighbouring Manipur. We, however, won't lay too much importance on the state election results. Even in 2018, the BJP saw losses in the states of MP, Rajasthan and Chattisgarh but the subsequent national elections saw the BJP nearly sweeping all the seats in these states.