“Voters are not stupid,” the late Harvard professor Vo Kee Jr. famously wrote. Results of the three recently held elections to the Legislative Assemblies Gujarat And Himachal PradeshAnd this Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) Validate this observation. Some of the major conclusions that can be drawn from these results are: one, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is not electorally invincible, despite its hugely oiled election machinery and charismatic, ultra-committed campaigner, Prime Minister Narendra Modi; second, the claim of silence being run by the Congress party in Gujarat is self-destructive; Third, the politics of polarization has its limits; And four, core governance issues matter.
So what are the implications of these results for the upcoming 2024 parliamentary elections?
By the time the 2024 elections come, it is plausible that the electorate loses BJP has suffered a setback in the Himachal Pradesh Legislative Assembly. And may be insignificant in MCD. This is because over the years, the BJP leadership has demonstrated that electoral defeat does not mean that the party cannot eventually form a government. Its ability to form governments through the backdoor – for example, in Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra in the past few years – is evidence of this new anti-democratic trend in India’s electoral politics. This is particularly effective when the margin of defeat between the BJP and the winning party is small – but difficult to overcome when the margin is large, as was the case in the West Bengal and Delhi assembly elections. The non-BJP winning parties this month – the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the MCD, and the Congress in Himachal Pradesh – are currently making clear gains due to their victories, given the relatively small margin in the 2024 elections may go away. In their vote percentage as compared to BJP.
The overwhelming majority that the BJP has secured in its victory in the Gujarat Assembly will clearly project a positive signal for its campaign for the 2024 parliamentary elections. However, some of the credit for the overwhelming electoral dominance of the BJP in the Gujarat assembly elections goes to the self-destructive silent campaign that the Congress had chosen. Retrospectively, it is now clear that the so-called silence campaign turned out to be no campaign at all, and the prospects of Congress revival from this point look rather bleak.
However, another advantage that the BJP enjoys is the dichotomy in the electoral choices made by the Indian electorate. For example, although voters in the 2018 assembly elections in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh voted decisively against the incumbent BJP state governments, they clearly voted for Mr. Modi’s BJP in the 2019 parliamentary elections. In Madhya Pradesh, the BJP got 28 Lok Sabha seats, while the Congress got only one seat; In Rajasthan, the BJP got 24 parliamentary seats and the Congress none; In Chhattisgarh, the BJP won nine seats and the Congress one. This has been the trend in Delhi since the 2014 elections, which is why AAP’s victory in the MCD elections does not mean it will retain these voters in the 2024 parliamentary elections. The same argument can be made for Himachal Pradesh. Overall, the political dynamics and trends seem to be in favor of the BJP, and whatever gains the opposition parties make this month may be fleeting.
Like 1977 or 1989?
All this could change if pre-poll opposition unity could be coherently aligned at the national level in the lead-up to the Lok Sabha elections. The key requirement for this is the emergence of a national leader who can raise the stakes by rallying opposition forces behind him, as Jayaprakash Narayan did in 1977 or VP Singh did in 1989. At this time, there is no such figure to rally around. Visibly, the campaign in recent elections has not added much clarity to the ranks of the opposition. Consider, for example, if the Congress (with a vote share of around 27%) and the AAP (13%) had contested the Gujarat Assembly elections together, they could have denied the BJP the large margin of victory it eventually won. was registered.
Historically, major political parties have benefited from the natural tendency of India’s opposition parties to stay aloof. The advantage that BJP has got today, was once given to Congress in many national and state level elections. In 1996, at an election rally in Bhubaneswar, addressed by Odisha stalwart Biju Patnaik, then in the Janata Dal, and VP Singh, Patnaik made an influential remark. On a visit to Uttar Pradesh, he said that people are telling the opposition parties to unite, then they will not need to come to seek votes; And if they didn’t unite, there was no point in asking for their votes. The campaigning for this winter’s elections and discussions between parties have produced no new indications of a move towards opposition unity.
A major difference between today’s BJP and the Congress of yesteryear is the extent to which the BJP has used state agencies to undermine opposition parties, often starving them of political donations and threatening their leaders Is. As a result, the Indian electoral system has now been restructured creating a disproportionate advantage for the BJP compared to its electoral opponents. This uneven playing field is sure to provide another significant advantage to the BJP in the 2024 elections.
Overall, there is not much evidence to suggest that 2024 could lead to a substantial political reorganization for the BJP or Mr. Modi to take over the leadership. are already going to be fundamentally transformative.
(Sheikh Mujibur Rahman teaches at Jamia Millia Central University, New Delhi. He is the author of the forthcoming book, Shikwa-e-Hind: The Political Future of Indian Muslims.,
Why BJP’s reverses in Himachal and Delhi don’t matter in 2024
One advantage the BJP enjoys is the duality of the electoral choices made by the Indian electorate. Image for representational purpose only | Photo Credit: Vijay Soneji
“Voters are not stupid,” the late Harvard professor Vo Kee Jr. famously wrote. Results of the three recently held elections to the Legislative Assemblies Gujarat And Himachal PradeshAnd this Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) Validate this observation. Some of the major conclusions that can be drawn from these results are: one, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is not electorally invincible, despite its hugely oiled election machinery and charismatic, ultra-committed campaigner, Prime Minister Narendra Modi; second, the claim of silence being run by the Congress party in Gujarat is self-destructive; Third, the politics of polarization has its limits; And four, core governance issues matter.
So what are the implications of these results for the upcoming 2024 parliamentary elections?
By the time the 2024 elections come, it is plausible that the electorate loses BJP has suffered a setback in the Himachal Pradesh Legislative Assembly. And may be insignificant in MCD. This is because over the years, the BJP leadership has demonstrated that electoral defeat does not mean that the party cannot eventually form a government. Its ability to form governments through the backdoor – for example, in Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra in the past few years – is evidence of this new anti-democratic trend in India’s electoral politics. This is particularly effective when the margin of defeat between the BJP and the winning party is small – but difficult to overcome when the margin is large, as was the case in the West Bengal and Delhi assembly elections. The non-BJP winning parties this month – the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the MCD, and the Congress in Himachal Pradesh – are currently making clear gains due to their victories, given the relatively small margin in the 2024 elections may go away. In their vote percentage as compared to BJP.
The overwhelming majority that the BJP has secured in its victory in the Gujarat Assembly will clearly project a positive signal for its campaign for the 2024 parliamentary elections. However, some of the credit for the overwhelming electoral dominance of the BJP in the Gujarat assembly elections goes to the self-destructive silent campaign that the Congress had chosen. Retrospectively, it is now clear that the so-called silence campaign turned out to be no campaign at all, and the prospects of Congress revival from this point look rather bleak.
However, another advantage that the BJP enjoys is the dichotomy in the electoral choices made by the Indian electorate. For example, although voters in the 2018 assembly elections in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh voted decisively against the incumbent BJP state governments, they clearly voted for Mr. Modi’s BJP in the 2019 parliamentary elections. In Madhya Pradesh, the BJP got 28 Lok Sabha seats, while the Congress got only one seat; In Rajasthan, the BJP got 24 parliamentary seats and the Congress none; In Chhattisgarh, the BJP won nine seats and the Congress one. This has been the trend in Delhi since the 2014 elections, which is why AAP’s victory in the MCD elections does not mean it will retain these voters in the 2024 parliamentary elections. The same argument can be made for Himachal Pradesh. Overall, the political dynamics and trends seem to be in favor of the BJP, and whatever gains the opposition parties make this month may be fleeting.
Like 1977 or 1989?
All this could change if pre-poll opposition unity could be coherently aligned at the national level in the lead-up to the Lok Sabha elections. The key requirement for this is the emergence of a national leader who can raise the stakes by rallying opposition forces behind him, as Jayaprakash Narayan did in 1977 or VP Singh did in 1989. At this time, there is no such figure to rally around. Visibly, the campaign in recent elections has not added much clarity to the ranks of the opposition. Consider, for example, if the Congress (with a vote share of around 27%) and the AAP (13%) had contested the Gujarat Assembly elections together, they could have denied the BJP the large margin of victory it eventually won. was registered.
Historically, major political parties have benefited from the natural tendency of India’s opposition parties to stay aloof. The advantage that BJP has got today, was once given to Congress in many national and state level elections. In 1996, at an election rally in Bhubaneswar, addressed by Odisha stalwart Biju Patnaik, then in the Janata Dal, and VP Singh, Patnaik made an influential remark. On a visit to Uttar Pradesh, he said that people are telling the opposition parties to unite, then they will not need to come to seek votes; And if they didn’t unite, there was no point in asking for their votes. The campaigning for this winter’s elections and discussions between parties have produced no new indications of a move towards opposition unity.
A major difference between today’s BJP and the Congress of yesteryear is the extent to which the BJP has used state agencies to undermine opposition parties, often starving them of political donations and threatening their leaders Is. As a result, the Indian electoral system has now been restructured creating a disproportionate advantage for the BJP compared to its electoral opponents. This uneven playing field is sure to provide another significant advantage to the BJP in the 2024 elections.
Overall, there is not much evidence to suggest that 2024 could lead to a substantial political reorganization for the BJP or Mr. Modi to take over the leadership. are already going to be fundamentally transformative.
(Sheikh Mujibur Rahman teaches at Jamia Millia Central University, New Delhi. He is the author of the forthcoming book, Shikwa-e-Hind: The Political Future of Indian Muslims.,