Four key messages from the elections

Is there a larger takeaway from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress victories in these two states?

Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh are very different states on most aspects. The former is also a much larger state than the latter. Is there a larger takeaway from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress victories in these two states? Here are four charts that try to answer this question.

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Gujarat strengthens its position as the BJP’s hegemonic core

When the BJP decided to make Narendra Modi its prime minister candidate before the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, it was not just the elevation of a political leader. The move also entailed an institutionalising of the “Gujarat Model” of politics and development within the BJP’s core political praxis. With two most important leaders -- the other one being Amit Shah -- of the BJP coming from the state, Gujarat represents the ideological core of the BJP today even though the party gets more Lok Sabha seats from other states. This ideological dominance came under serious threat when the BJP’s seat tally dropped to the lowest since 1995 in the 2017 elections and the Congress recorded its best ever performance since 1990. With the BJP recording the biggest ever victory in the history of Gujarat, the latest election results have laid to rest all speculations about a BJP decline in the state. This is bound to have a bearing on the ideological weight of the Gujarat Model within the BJP.

Himachal shows an active opposition can still take on the BJP

Congress’s Himachal Pradesh victory is its first in four years as it could not win even one election on its own after its victories in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh in the state elections held in late 2018. Its losses during this period include states where it was in power, such as Punjab and, states where it was the undisputed challenger to the BJP, such as in Uttarakhand and Assam. Where Himachal Pradesh offers a lesson to the besieged grand old party of India is that putting up a sincere fight on locally relevant issues – the problems of apple farmers and restoration of Old Pension Scheme were big talking points for the Congress in Himachal -- and strong local leaders can still keep it in reckoning for power at the local level. To put things in perspective, the Congress had a lower vote share in Himachal Pradesh (27.5%) in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections than it had in Gujarat (32.1%).

See Chart 2: Congress vote share in last four assembly and Lok Sabha elections in Himachal Pradesh

Congress’s growing crisis will make things complicated for the opposition in the run-up to 2024

2022 has been a particularly bad year for the Congress in terms of state elections with the party recording its worst ever performance in the states of Punjab and now Gujarat. In both these states, the main reason for the party’s downfall has been the entry of the Aam Admi Party (AAP) in the electoral fray. While the AAP managed to win Delhi and Punjab from the Congress, its performance in Gujarat is more on the lines of Goa where it played spoiler for the Congress. Unless the Congress makes a recovery in the state elections scheduled in 2023 – it is in power in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh and the primary opposition in Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh – the opposition will find it very difficult to chalk out any united strategy with the Congress. And with the AAP performing below par compared to what the exit polls predicted in both the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) and Gujarat elections, its political stock has come down compared to where it was after its Punjab victory. The irony is best captured in the shrinking national footprint of India’s oldest party, namely the Congress and the technical upgradation of the AAP to national party status despite the fact that it can’t expect major victories outside Delhi and Punjab.

See Chart 3: Change in Congress vote share in last two assembly elections in major states

AAP realises the limits of soft-Hindutva

This is the biggest lesson the AAP has learnt in this election cycle. AAP’s political rhetoric took a big turn towards soft-Hindutva after its Punjab victory, perhaps with an eye on the Gujarat and MCD elections where the BJP was its main challenger. The entire premise of this kind of a political tactics would have been that it would allow the AAP to make some inroads into the BJP’s support base without any significant exodus from potential anti-BJP voters. The MCD and Gujarat results show that this was a wrong idea. The BJP actually increased its vote share in both the MCD and Gujarat elections between 2017 and 2022. On the other hand, the Congress did not collapse completely in both Delhi and Gujarat, which would have given a biggest boost to AAP. To be sure, AAP is not the first opposition party to have experimented with soft-Hindutva, although its version is far more explicit than what parties such as the Congress have practiced so far.

See Chart 4: Change in BJP vote share in Delhi (MCD to MCD) and Gujarat (assembly to assembly)