The 2004 loss came as a shock to not only the BJP but even political pundits throughout the country who’d predicted a comfortable BJP win. The ‘wave’ seemed to have been infavour of the ruling party, especially on the back of state assembly wins in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh in 2003.
It were these wins that prompted Prime Minister Vajpayee to call for early polls. He felt that the mood of the nation was with his party, and so his government went into polls with the ‘India Shining’ campaign. Even though the BJP suffered an unexpected defeat, there was no doubt that Vajpayee’s tenure had seen economic growth and infrastructural development with massive projects such as the Golden Quadrilateral.
As the results trickled in, it became apparent that the Congress had achieved an easy victory. Sonia Gandhi formed the government with Manmohan Singh as the prime minister.
As usual, psephologists and poll experts got down to analysing the reason behind the loss. The almost unanimous conclusion was that the BJP had gone overboard with its ‘India Shining’ campaign. According to them, the campaign had offended the poor. Sonia Gandhi had taken advantage of this slogan during the polls by mocking it by pointing out the poverty in the country. Even LK Advani had admitted that they lost due to overconfidence & wrong slogans like ‘India Shining’. But was this truly the reason behind their defeat?
These reasons may have affected the final result, but the real story lies in the ‘numbers’. The maths behind the scenes is what determines the result of any polls, whether state or general.
Let’s see how the numbers fared in the 2004 general polls –
In the 1999 polls, the BJP had attained 182 seats while the Congress got 114. The BJP got 8.65 crore votes (23.75%) while the Congress got substantially more – 10.31 crore votes (28.30%).
If the analysis that the ‘India Shining’ campaign had led to the downfall of the BJP were true, then it is but natural that the BJP would have seen a substantially eroded voter-base in the 2004 polls. But that wasn’t the case.
In the 2004 polls, the BJP lost with 138 seats in its kitty while the Congress got 145. The vote shares were as follows – BJP 8.63 crore (22.16%), Congress 10.34 crore (26.53%). Clearly, neither did the BJP lose many votes in comparison to the 1999 polls nor did the Congress gain heavily. Yet, with almost a similar vote-base the BJP ended up with 44 seats less and the Congress gained 31.
So, if there had been a retaliation of sorts by the poor against BJP’s campaign, then it would have experienced a much larger fall in votes which clearly didn’t happen. Thus, the assessment that the ‘India Shining’ campaing led to the downfall of the BJP seems nothing but a myth.
Understandably, the question that people would ask is how the Congress managed to win so many seats more and the BJP lose almost four dozen when their votes were largely intact? The reason is the numbers behind the game. The arithmetic.
Indian elections are based on the system of British Electorate, also called the Westminster Electoral system. In such a system, more votes doesn’t guarantee victory. What matters is how these votes are distributed across constituencies. The concept is called ‘First Past the Post’ which means in each constituency, the party with the highest votes wins the constituency and the rest of the votes going to other parties in that constituency are not considered. These votes cannot be carried forward to other constituencies because each constituency is completely isolated from each other in terms of vote counting.
Let’s understand this with a simple example –
Assume that there are three constituencies where the only two parties contesting are the BJP and Congress. Constituency A has 30K votes, Constituency B has 15K votes, and Constituency C has 8K votes. For a party to form the government, it has to win 2 out of 3 constituencies at least.
Let’s say the BJP wins A with 26K votes and the Congress gets 4K votes.
Congress wins B with 11K votes while the BJP gets 4K votes.
Congress also wins C with 6K votes while the BJP gets 2K votes.
As Congress has won 2 seats out of 3, it forms the government. But do the vote shares support this victory? BJP got a total of 32K votes while the Congress got 21K votes. The vote shares are – BJP 60.37% and Congress got 39.62%. Yet, the Congress formed the government.
This shows how a party despite getting more votes can lose and election if the opponent plays strategically.
Even in the first General Election that was held in 1952, Congress had managed to win 74.4 percent of the Lok Sabha seats despite getting only 45 percent of the votes. The Congress has always applied the concept of ‘First Past the Post’ very well.
Why do you think the Congress courts minority votes? Because in majority of the constituencies Hindu votes are in greater numbers. But they don’t unanimously vote in favour of one party. The Congress understands this which is why it courts minority votes as it knows a certain segment of Hindu votes will inevitably fall in its lap. And in the end the combined votes of the minorities and a portion of Hindu votes will lead to it winning a constituency.
This is what happened in the Bihar polls as even though the BJP was the single largest party in terms of vote share (around 24%), it got the least number of seats amongst the three main parties in the state. The arithmetic of the Lalu-Nitish alliance trumped the public sentiment in favour of the BJP.
However, it seems unlikely at least for now, that the BJP will suffer the same fate in the upcoming 2019 polls. The BJP has very astutely brought into its fold regional powers, and Amit Shah is specifically concentrating on those seats that it didn’t win in the Lok Sabha 2014.
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