In an era where incumbent governments in India’s states are falling like a pack of cards, the Arvind Kejriwal’s retaining of the Delhi Assembly with a 90 percent brute majority in the assembly is a rare political event.
The Aam Aadmi Party maintained its vote 50-percent-plus vote share in the face of the onslaught of 300 leaders and Members of Parliament campaigning for the Bharatiya Janata Party. The BJP's improvement of vote share by around 7 percent yielded only 5 additional seats, taking it to 8 in the 70-member assembly. While the Congress performance optically appears unchanged at 0 seats, its vote share plummetted further to less than 5 percent in a state that it was in power as recently as 2013.
Shifts Under The Surface
While AAP retained 61 out of 67 seats it won in the previous election, BJP retained two.
The BJP gained 6 seats from the AAP, 5 out of these came from East Delhi where Purvanchali voters are in good numbers.
The rise in BJP’s vote share meant that the average margin of victory for AAP candidates declined from 28,672 to 22,131 votes.
On its two retained seats, BJP doubled its victory margin from 7,762 to 14,552.
AAP lost big on the six seats it failed to retain, its average loss margin was 20,051 votes, suggesting a high level of local anti-incumbency against those six candidates.
Clear Split Between State And National Elections
The Aam Aadmi Party had finished third in the Lok Sabha elections of April-May 2019. It had secured just 18 percent vote share, even lower than Congress’ 22 percent; with BJP securing 57 percent.
AAP gained 17 percent votes from BJP in the assembly elections 2020 as these voters seem to have preferred BJP because of Modi in May 2019, now seem to have preferred AAP because of Kejriwal. Around one-third of the voters in both national as well as state elections are increasingly voting on the 'leadership factor'. In an almost equal measure of 18 percent, voters who preferred Congress in the Lok Sabha Polls—because AAP was not seen as BJP's national rival—voted for Kejriwal’s party in the state elections.
Conversely for the BJP, that 17 percent loss of votes to the AAP explains how the party went from 57 percent in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls to a tad short of 40 percent on Feb. 11.
There may be another explanation. As per the Axis My India exit poll, almost half of BJP's Lok Sabha voters in Delhi voted for AAP in the Vidhan Sabha elections. That corresponds to getting a 27 percent vote share bloc from the BJP. AAP also gained votes from the Congress, which were mostly minority and Dalit voters.
In this second breakdown of the math, BJP after losing 27 percent vote share to AAP gained 10 percent from Congress, going from 57 percent to 40 percent.
So we find a significant chunk of voters in Delhi making up a floating vote bloc which swings between parties depending on the nature of polls, the political environment, and the leadership on offer.
AAP enjoyed a 22 percent lead over BJP in the 2015 elections. To make it a contest in 2019, BJP needed a 10 percent swing away from AAP and towards itself.
While BJP gained 7 percent vote share, it was largely at the expense of Congress that lost 6 percent, and only marginally away from the AAP (-1 percent). This is why this jump in vote share doesn’t translate into seats.
‘National Issues’ Fail Again: Maharashtra Redux
While BJP started the campaign by announcing former mayors and councilors as candidates and shifted from its strategy of holding big rallies to nukkad sabhas, it couldn’t resist the temptation of making the anti-CAA protests at Shaheen Bagh the main poll plank of the party. Its leaders went overboard, candidate, Kapil Mishra even tweeting the election was between India and Pakistan. People rightly taught him a lesson rejecting his style of politics.
However, data collected for the Axis My India exit poll shows that around 70 percent of the voters saw development, price rise, and unemployment, as the key issues.
Only 7 percent of voters in Delhi said they considering national security as a key issue.
The choice of strategy was baffling, especially with post-poll data after the Maharashtra election in October showing that only 5 percent of those surveyed believed nationalism was the prime consideration for their votes. This was clear three months ago.
AAP Further Consolidates Dalit And Minorities’ Votes
The Aam Aadmi Party's gains from the Congress and BJP across caste and community groups vis-à-vis the 2019 general elections ranged from 28 percent to 43 percent. The Aam Aadmi Party won 41 percent support from minority communities despite Arvind Kejriwal staying away from weighing in on the Shaheen Bagh protests. In other sections, AAP's school welfare scheme helped it gather 43 percent votes among Dalits, and ate into the BJP's upper-caste core-vote with 38 percent of upper-caste votes.
An apples-to-apples comparison of the 2020 segmental break-up to that in 2015 shows that the AAP held its 50-percent-plus vote share largely steady by offsetting the drop in upper-caste and OBC support by fresh gains in Dalit and Muslim votes.
AAP Adopts BJP’s Playbook
The Aam Aadmi Party pulled many a leaf out of the Modi-Shah book of election campaigning. Kejriwal realised that people are increasingly voting based on leadership. Just like Modi did in the 2019 Lok Sabha campaign Kejriwal kept on harping on the fact that the opposition had no credible candidate for the office he occupied. Just like Modi told voters last year to forget the MP-candidate, and cast their vote directly to him, Kejriwal did the same.
Just as Modi has rebranded himself as the messiah of poor through schemes like PMAY, Ujjwala, PM Kisan, Kejriwal has also shaped his image with policies on the poor and lower strata of the society. As a result, AAP’s lead is the highest among the lowest income category voters. The 2015-2020 programmes on electricity, water, healthcare, and school education have also developed a loyal vote bank among women.
On social media too, AAP seems to be learning from BJP’s digital army, with memes and spoofs about BJP's Manoj Tiwari, just the way the BJP continues to depict Rahul Gandhi.
So while the broad narrative remains that the voters of Delhi gave a thumbs up to Kejriwal and his delivery of promises, and rejecting the negative campaign and lackluster attempt by BJP to make a comeback, the result is also an outcome of the success and failure of the execution of their respective campaign strategies.
Amitabh Tiwari is a political commentator, strategist, and consultant advising political parties and leaders. He was a corporate and investment banker.
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of BloombergQuint or its editorial team.
As a Subscriber you get
Stories
RECOMMENDED FOR YOU
POPULAR