Classifying the 2024 elections for history books

Almost exactly a decade ago, on the 7^th of April, 2014, something very unusual was unfolding in the sleepy north-eastern town of Jorhat that would have far reaching consequences on Indian politics. Today, it all seems like preordained destiny, but back then, without the benefit of hindsight, political trends were still quite fuzzy and unclear. April 7^th was the very first day of elections and it was a day when we would visualise for the first time the actual ascendance of Modi who was hitherto branded by many in the media as “having no electoral success outside of Gujarat”.

The veteran Congress leader, Bijoy Krishna Handique was virtually considered as a man who “could not be defeated in Jorhat” as he had held on to that seat since 1991 and was seen as the pride of the town. Our own models had classified this LS seat as “lean-Congress” in the run-up to the elections, so when we started receiving the first sets of data, we could hardly believe our own eyes. In fact, we were frantically verifying with our on the ground teams from Assam as regards to the veracity of the incoming data.

Eventually, after all the back and forth, at around 6 PM in the evening, we projected that Mr Handique will not only be losing Jorhat for the very first time but also the BJP would be winning this seat for the very first time in history. This is how a small sleepy town in Assam became the harbinger of 2014 elections where many more Congress/secular citadels would fall and BJP would win many “unwinnable” seats over the space of next two months. The powerful tidal wave of anti-incumbency was at the heart of the Jorhat story on that day in Assam and it ultimately powered the rise of Modi.

The 2014 elections are arguably the greatest example of anti-incumbency in India or the world because Congress party which was in power at the time with 200+ seats was reduced to a paltry 44. One could literally sense the anger of voters in the air everywhere. Except for the liberal elites in Delhi, almost the whole nation knew the fate of the Congress party on the very first day of voting. We can safely bet that such levels of anger did not exist in any of the past elections, not in 1989 when Rajiv Gandhi actually won 200+ seats but chose to remain in the opposition, not even in 1977 after the excesses of emergency.

Indian elections can be classified broadly into two categories; anti-incumbency elections and pro-incumbency elections (of course there is a third kind but we will go there in a bit). Since the 1970s both these categories have seen exactly 4 elections each (elections before 1970’s are generally not good barometers because of the goodwill that Congress enjoyed due to the freedom movement and also because the opposition simply did not exist in any meaningful way)

The anti-incumbency election cycles

Although each of these elections had their own specific themes like, for instance, the sympathy wave for Rajiv Gandhi in 1984 or the public anger against the never ending squabbles of the Janata party in 1980 which was a den of giant egos; nevertheless, there are unique set of features that form a common thread to weave each of these categories. In order to understand where 2024 stands, we have to do a factorial analysis of these features and arrive at the most logical conclusion. Therefore, first let us consider the six unique features of an anti-incumbency election cycle.

• Genuine mass anger against the government and its institutions

• The recent rise of an opposition leader in mass popularity

• High levels of attrition from the ruling party/alliance as politicians begin to abandon the sinking ship

• The ruling party losing most of the state and local elections in the 2 years preceding the general election

• Increasing levels of localised micro-anti-incumbency against sitting MPs

• Subtle anger against perceived injustices finding space in pop-culture

Take a look at all the four elections we have classified in the anti-incumbency column and you will see that all these 5 features will be present in varying degrees. Especially, the first 3 factors are absolutely crucial and can be methodically quantified for each election cycle. In fact, the absence of these features automatically disqualifies an election from being an anti-incumbency election. Let us consider each of the 4 elections listed above to back-test for these features of anti-incumbency.

In 1977, there was massive anger against the Congress government and people had genuinely lost faith in institutions as thousands of opposition leaders had been jailed. Jayaprakash Narayan, popularly known as JP had fired the public’s imagination and had emerged as the fulcrum of opposition politics. Many powerful Congress MPs and ministers were facing micro-anti-incumbency in their constituencies, so much so that it eventually led to the defeat of both Indira and Sanjay Gandhi. Many top leaders like Jagjivan Ram had abandoned the Congress party in the run-up to the election which was a big indicator of the coming wave. Although no elections were held in the run-up to 1977 due the emergency, the Navoday movement in Gujarat and student politics of Bihar were great pointers to the impending disaster for the Congress party. The pop-culture too wasn’t behind as superstars like Devanand had turned against the government and songs like “jhumka gira re Bareilly ke bazaar mein” had come to symbolise the loss of Indira Gandhi.

1980 was also an angry election as the voters just hated the institutional instability and Indira had once again emerged as the “most stable choice”. Janata Party had split into multiple smaller units so the attrition rates were much higher and almost all the powerful leaders faced massive localised anti-incumbency in their constituencies – Raj Narayan was a prime example of this as he had defeated Indira Gandhi but had failed to even meet his voters regularly after the elections. Janata had lost almost all the by-elections in the run-up to 1980, including the crucial Chikkamagalur seat in Karnataka which had sent Indira Gandhi back to the parliament.

The 1989 election was marked by a massive anti-corruption movement after the Bofors scandal which had led to the lack of trust among ordinary people and V.P. Singh had emerged as the fulcrum of the opposition with his popularity rising every day. While many leaders, including V.P. Singh himself had abandoned Rajiv Gandhi, the opposition had united across the spectrum from the Right wing BJP to the centrist Janata Dal to the Left and communists. In fact, there were indications for 4 years about how the tide had turned against Rajiv which was symbolised by the rise of powerful regional leaders like Ramakrishna Hegde in Karnataka, N.T. Rama Rao in Andhra Pradesh, Prafulla Kumar Mohanta in Assam who all defied the Congress wave and defeated the grand old party in assembly elections. Even in Uttar Pradesh, Congress was losing ground in each subsequent by-elections until it got fully decimated in 1989 (to never recover again). The levels of micro-anti-incumbency were so high that after popular film star Amitabh Bachchan resigned, V.P. Singh emerged victorious in the Allahabad by-elections despite massive deployment of resources by the Rajiv Gandhi government. In the pop culture too, there were dozens of folk songs dedicated to the drought mismanagement by the government across thousands of villages in India.

The 2014 election is of course fresh in our collective memories and we do remember how the anti-corruption movements of Baba Ramdev, Anna Hazare and Shri Shri Ravishankar had virtually paralysed the central government for many months. Narendra Modi, after his 2012 Gujarat victory had emerged as the most popular opposition leader and was doing massive public rallies in different parts of the country every Sunday to be beamed live on national television across the nation. Almost the entire top Congress leadership, including the Gandhis were facing micro-anti-incumbency in their respective constituencies. UPA had lost many allies, not the least among them being the most trusted political weathercock of Indian politics, Ram Vilas Paswan, to the NDA which was telling a story of it’s own. Then, Modi went on a campaign spree in the three north Indian states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh which enabled BJP to hand crushing defeats to the Congress in these states just months before the national elections. The pop culture had reached new highs with the advent of social media where BJP leaning right wing nationalists dominated the entire landscape  and absolutely killed the secular liberal narrative. BJP also used some very well crafted campaigns like “Chai pe Charcha” and the iron donation campaign for the statue of unity etc.

The pro-incumbency election cycles

Similarly, there have been 5 common features of all pro-incumbency elections in India.

• No discernible mass anger against the national government and general satisfaction about how the nation is being managed.

• Ruling party leader being more popular than any opposition leader

• Ruling party/coalition more united than the opposition with no attrition of leaders or parties

• Ruling party winning state and local elections in the 2 years preceding the national election

• Macro narrative being directionally friendly towards the ruling party

The 1971 election was basically an Indira Gandhi election as she was the central theme and no opposition leader even mattered. Contrary to the political debate before the 71 elections, the split in the Congress party in 1969 had ensured that the grassroots infrastructure stuck with Mrs Gandhi while the Congress elites had walked out minus any cadre/workers which had already made the election lopsided. To make matters worse, the entire opposition had turned the election into a “Indira hatao” status while she was campaigning on “Gareebi hatao”. Again, contrary to the opposition’s belief, there was no anger against the nationalisation of various industries and banks by the government as the masses actually supported this move and therefore there were no mass protests anywhere. Thus the overall narrative of that election was that the country was heading in the right socialist path which was the mainstream ideology of that era and suited the Indira Congress political fortunes.

By all means, the 1984 election was an aberration owing to the assassination of Indira Gandhi. Yet, even without that sympathy wave, the fact was that Congress was heading for a simple majority on its stability plank and because the opposition was deeply divided and leaderless. The assassination of the Prime Minister did bestow upon the party an extra 100 odd seats and possibly some 5-6% additional vote-share. All the other factors of pro-incumbency still did hold for 1984.

That brings us to the surprise election of 2009. It was, for those in BJP and the RSS ecosystem, a heart-breaking election at that time but in hindsight it should be seen as a turning point election that changed the trajectory of India’s electoral politics and the fortunes of Hindu nationalism. For two decades, India was experimenting with fragmented coalition politics which had led to many socio-economic anomalies that were taking us to a breaking point. In the 2009 election, the electorate, in their collective wisdom had matured enough to realise the need of a stable ruling polity to achieve India’s 21^st century aspirations. Dr Manmohan Singh led Congress party had demonstrated the first pro-incumbency election after 25 years and it was as if like the checklist of all the factors had been achieved.

In the run-up to the 2009 election there was total calm across India as the economy was growing at its fastest pace and the humungous corruption scams had not yet been exposed. There were no mass protests anywhere (they would come later in the UPA2 era). By no means, Dr Manmohan Singh could have been classified as being “popular” but there was nobody in the opposition who could counter him as L.K. Advani had lost the plot after visiting Pakistan and describing Jinnah as “secular” which had followed his massive failure as home Minister in the IC-814 hijacking of 1999. Even the core BJP voters had lost trust in him by 2009 and the party had become too focussed on the internecine elite battles of Delhi politics to actually care about the grassroots cadre. The UPA too had remained steadfastly more cogent than the NDA despite the Left having walked out on the Indo-US nuclear deal. Congress was also winning in a string of states across different parts of the country. From Delhi to Haryana to Rajasthan to Maharashtra to Andhra Pradesh to Assam, Congress had either won or was going to win all local elections in the run up to 2009. The strong economy narrative combined with perceived successes of the Indo-US nuclear deal and the rising middle class had given the UPA a distinct pro-incumbency trajectory.

In the previous 2019 election almost all the factors were in favour of pro-incumbency. Modi was by far the most popular politician in the country and the opposition’s Rahul Gandhi was no match for him at any level. Despite all the efforts by the opposition to pin down the government on the Rafael deal, there was absolutely no mass protest anywhere (in fact, no opposition has since even talked about it which just goes on to show how they did not believe in their own narratives). The macro-narrative was also completely in sync with the ruling party at the centre, especially after Balakot. NDA too had remained almost fully intact (except for the fallout of TDP in Andhra Pradesh) while the opposition was a divided house. Yet there was one minor anomaly that needs to be analysed. BJP had failed to form governments in 4 state elections in the run-up to 2019 – Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. The fact of the matter was that in Karnataka, MP and Rajasthan, BJP had missed the bus very narrowly, with less than half a dozen seats and probably about a percentage point of vote-share. Also given the fact that prior to these 4 states BJP had registered some massive victories in big states like Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh should not be ignored. So the state elections only showed a small degree of anti-incumbency, especially in the rural parts. This is when the Modi government implemented its DBT schemes at scale within a very short period of time to completely mitigate this building angst of the voters. In fact, the roll out of the “PM kisan Samman Nidhi” and its impact on 2019 is one of the greatest examples of how electoral battles can be won or lost with mere administrative governance at scale.

Where does 2024 stand in the classification?

Before we place the 2024 election in the classification table, there is that one small but important matter of the third kind of elections that India has witnessed other than the two main categories that we have to deal with. These are all the elections that were held between 1991 and 2009. These are elections that we generally classify as “confused” elections, for the voters were widely fragmented and had so many choices that the final verdict almost always ended up being a confusing one.

The classic ones in this category are the 1999 and 2004 elections. We have been told ad nauseum that there was widespread anti-incumbency against the Vajpayee government which led to the Congress coming to power in 2004, but the truth is quite boringly mathematical in nature. In the 2004 election, the Vajpayee led NDA had lost a mere 1.6% vote-share, while the opposition UPA had actually lost an even greater 1.8% vote-share but managed to win 7 more seats than the ruling coalition and came to power. What is even more ironic was that in the previous election cycle of 1999, the Vajpayee led NDA had actually lost nearly 2% vote-share but had still managed to form a government with 182 seats, while the UPA had in fact gained 2.5% but had still managed to win only 114 seats.

That is how the fragmented coalition era politics worked, on the vagaries of how small individual parties performed and what impact it had on the various coalition vote-share matrices of different groups. None of these elections can be classified as either pro or anti-incumbency, for these election operated on different levels. For instance, whatever the performance of the government, the OBCs and Muslims would always vote for their preferred parties, or the Dalits would vote for their parties and thereby impacting the performance of all coalitions due to micro level attritions changing the macro picture completely. So, in 2004, the SP and BSP between them won some 55 seats in the state of Uttar Pradesh and hurt the BJP in two dozen seats which eventually proved to be a death knell for the NDA government and it had nothing to do with the incumbency factor at all.

What are the factors at play in 2024? Let us do a simple check list analysis of the combined 7 factors of the incumbency test.

·      Factor 1: Popularity of leaders: Narendra Modi is still by far the most popular leader in the country today, almost 3.5 times more popular than his closest rival, Rahul Gandhi of Congress, by all measures. Modi’s charm and aura have only grown in the decade that he has been in power, while the opposition has just never managed to produce a leader who can take him on. So that clearly goes in favour of pro-incumbency in our checklist.

·      Factor 2: Mass Protests: There have been no major mass protests against the government barring the agitating farmers of Punjab in the last 2-3 years. In fact, even this farm protest 2.0, started a couple of months ago, has almost totally fizzled out. Yes, Rahul Gandhi has tried his best to create a mass movement through his “Nyay Yatra” but it has neither found resonance with the masses nor has it enthused anybody outside the very core Congress voters (read as minorities and those perpetual protesters). In fact, the lack of protest in India has created an eerily calm atmosphere; for instance, the Delhi CM, Arvind Kejriwal has now been arrested for almost a month and there hasn’t been even a whimper of protest from Delhi voters who have elected him with overwhelming 5/6^th majorities twice! That is another positive pro-incumbency factor in our checklist.

·      Factor 3: Faith in government and institutions: Faith in the government and institutions has remained steadfast throughout the previous decade. Vast majority of Hindus cutting across class, caste, region and linguistic barriers are overwhelmed by the government’s efforts to build the Ram Temple. No this is not merely a rhetoric, but it is a simple fact. Indians see the consecration of Ram temple within 5 years of Supreme Court ruling as a symbol of how the government has now developed this capacity to undertake complex and complicated projects and complete them within the stipulated time. This holds true for various infrastructure projects too, like the Vande Bharat or Highways, Airports et al. Voters also tangibly see how they get benefits from DBT without having to pay any bribe to the middlemen and derive the same conclusion and faith in the institutions. So point number three also is in favour of pro-incumbency

·      Factor 4: Electoral Trends in the run-up: In 2019, despite minor setbacks in a few assembly elections, the ruling party had managed to win a massive mandate again. Conversely, the Congress party after having won 4 states in the run-up to 2019 had still failed to create anti-incumbency because all other factors where in favour of incumbency. This time, barring Karnataka and Telangana (BJP was not the main contestant in the latter), BJP has won almost everything else in the last 2 and a half years – that is Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, some of the biggest Indian states. What is more, BJP has also come back to power in two other big states, Maharashtra and Bihar, by re-forming coalitions in those states. In fact, the electoral trajectory has probably never been this one-sided in any pro-incumbency election of the last 40 odd years. There goes point number 4, clearly in the pro-incumbency column of the checklist.

·      Factor 5: Unity and attrition rates: BJP could have simply gone to elections without making any changes to its NDA coalition and would have probably still emerged victorious, but instead the party has worked diligently for two years and built coalitions by adding more and more partners to NDA. From Maharashtra to Bihar to Andhra Pradesh to Tamil Nadu to even Karnataka, NDA now is more coherent than it was even at its peak in 2019. While the opposition, despite all the tall talk of INDI Alliance has left vast swaths of opposition landscape out in the limbo, especially in geographies where it matters the most. For example, in the very first phase of elections on the 19^th of April, Muslim candidates of BSP are expected to cause major damage to the opposition alliance and help BJP which could become a harbinger of things to come in the next phases. Similarly, the loss of Nitish Kumar in Bihar and NCP in Maharashtra are massive blows to opposition unity. The number of Congress and opposition leaders making a beeline to join BJP or NDA every week is in itself the great attrition indicator of political trajectory. Another definite positive for pro-incumbency in our checklist.

·      Factor 6: The narrative trajectory: If anything, the narrative has been so positive for the ruling party that maybe it is hitting a saturation level. Whether it is in mass media or social media or even in WhatsApp family conversations, the sheer positive convexity of the narrative surrounding Modi and his government is seen to be believed. In fact, this overwhelming positive narrative may face the dangers of drowning out any contraindicators. So factor 6 is also in the pro-incumbency checklist.

·      Factor7: Micro-Anti-Incumbency: When we look at how the BJP’s vote is structured in 2024, this is the general formula that holds true to most parts of India with minor regional variations – 50% vote is for Modi, 30% is for party and ideology, 10% for the candidate and 10% through the local cadre. So all BJP has to do is get the candidates right and ensure that cadre are active to win most of the marginal seats it is contesting. Yet, 10 years is a long time in politics and it creates pockets of opposition both by inertia and dynamics, so micro-anti-incumbency does exist here and there. The BJP leadership has done the smart thing by denying tickets to many sitting MPs to mitigate this micro anger, but it still remains to be seen how this plays out on election day. Also, another fact is that this kind of micro-anti-incumbency holds true for opposition MPs too, especially in the south and the east where BJP is now in ascendancy. This is one factor we will classify as neutral in our checklist and wait for election days to pass on full judgment.

The year 2024 is screaming out with 6 out of 7 factors that it is an overwhelmingly pro-incumbency election year for India with very little space for the opposition to make any inroads. As we have seen throughout our electoral history, when factors are so clearly pointing towards a direction, never has the outcome been in doubt.

So are there absolutely no risk factors for the impending Modi 3.0? As we see it, there exists only one path for the outcome to be any different and so many farfetched events have to all fall in place for such an outcome to materialize. First of all there needs to exist strong micro-anti-incumbency in at least 60+ seats where BJP had won last time and secondly this micro-anger must get channelised to act at scale to turn against the government. There is scant evidence on the ground that micro-anti-incumbency is anywhere close to being that strong. Even if some micro-anti-incumbency does exist, can a channel be created to weaponize it at scale, in time for elections? As of now, the opposition in India has demonstrated neither the gumption nor the wherewithal to even attempt to create such a channel. So the only way this can even be attempted is by external interference, especially by techno-financial warfare. Now that the global geopolitics is already in conflict zone and India has, for the first time, begun to play the great game, maybe someone powerful enough with requisite resources might attempt such an audacious adventure. Thus, barring something like a Bank Run on the streets of India, Narendra Bhai Damordas Modi will likely take oath of office in June.