Elections
How an INDIA undercurrent tamed the Modi wave in the 2024 election, in 3 charts
Summary
- The 2024 election results may have humbled Modi and the BJP as they failed to cross the halfway mark in terms of seat share, but over one-third of the party’s candidates still got over 50% vote share, a Mint analysis shows.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s hopes to return to power with a bigger mandate for a historic third term and a sense of invincibility were rooted in the success he had tasted in 2019. That year, as many as 51% of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) candidates garnered a majority of votes. The 2024 election results may have humbled Modi and the BJP as they failed to cross the halfway mark in terms of seat share, but over one-third of the party’s candidates still got over 50% vote share, a Mint analysis shows.
Also read: Lok Sabha Election 2024: How the verdict unfolded, in 11 charts
In historical context, this is the second-best feat (after 2019) achieved by the single-largest party in each election since sentiment-driven polls took centre stage in 1984. India’s first-past-the-post electoral system allows candidates to win even if most voters in their seats vote against them, hence the ability to win big in individual seats is remarkable. (For context, in 2009, just 10% of Congress candidates won with a majority, nearly an all-time low for a winning party.) The BJP’s feat shows there were pockets of strongholds, if not a pan-India Modi wave.
But this is not to say that there weren’t any uncomfortable takeaways from the incumbent’s performance, more prominently in rural India, which faced the double whammy of high inflation and low wages. The BJP’s tally in the 2024 Lok Sabha election dropped as dramatically as it had soared in 2019; the party saw its vote share declining in more seats, and its victory margins shrank. Of course, the Congress was the beneficiary of the BJP’s miseries, which saw a reversal of fortunes and helped its umbrella alliance with regional parties reach unexpectedly close to the BJP’s tally.
INDIA undercurrent
Compared to the Modi wave in 2019, the election this year was defined by the INDIA bloc undercurrent, which all major pollsters failed to see. The alliance, which came together in 2023 with a goal to stop the Modi wave, succeeded as it stopped the BJP below the halfway mark, contrary to the expectations of 400+ seats for its alliance.
The BJP won 156 seats by a majority vote, underpinning its strongholds, but it lost more seats (201). That marks a reversal of its 2019 exploits, when it had lost just 133 seats and won with a majority on 224. Out of the 399 constituencies where the BJP contested in both years, it lost vote share in 274 and gained in just 125. Out of the 207 seats where the party won in 2019 and 2024, its victory margin shrank in 147—with the dip being more than 10 percentage points in 88 of these cases.
Lok Sabha elections 2024: Key states and parties that moved the needle
Conversely, Congress, which emerged as the party with the highest seat tally in the INDIA bloc, recorded a big rise (by more than 10 percentage points) in its vote share on 76 of the 306 seats it contested in both 2019 and 2024. The BJP’s drubbing came from Uttar Pradesh, where 13 seats recorded a big decline in vote share and 19 saw the same in winning margin.
Lok Sabha Election 2024: How women candidates performed
BJP’s big leads down, Congress wins by satisfactory margins
The rural rout
Earlier this year, the BJP delivered its over three-decade-old promise of a grand Ram temple in Ayodhya, but the ploy failed to impress voters in the constituency. Modi himself won his Varanasi seat but by a margin of a mere 13.5%. Beyond these high-stakes areas, the BJP also faced a massive setback in rural India as key issues such as inflation, unemployment, and low wages, likely overshadowed Modi and the mandir. Even as the BJP managed to hold up in urban areas, rural areas were behind the setback seen by the party. The party’s tally in rural-heavy constituencies fell from 253 in 2019 to 193 in 2024, with victories with majority vote share diminishing. The distress in rural areas wasn’t unknown, or unheard of, before the elections but it was left unseen behind the shining growth numbers.
The BJP has suffered losses but is set to form the government with its alliance. However, the rural setback may force it to rethink its economic strategy to address the unresolved economic issues.
