Number Theory: Can the BJP win 370 seats in Lok Sabha polls?

One way to answer this question is to look at how much the BJP will have to gain compared to previous elections to achieve this target.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will win at least 370 seats in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls and the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) will cross the 400 mark, Prime Minister Narendra Modi predicted on Monday while speaking in the Lok Sabha. Can the BJP achieve this target in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections? While predicting election results is always fraught with risks, one way to answer this question is to look at how much the BJP will have to gain compared to previous elections to achieve this target. Here is what an HT analysis shows.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi predicted on Monday that the NDA will cross the 400 mark in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. (HT File Photo/Sanchit Khanna)

What if the BJP were to win all Lok Sabha constituencies it has won in any previous election?

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  What if the BJP were to win all Lok Sabha constituencies it has won in any previous election?

  An obvious constraint facing such a method is that parliamentary constituency (PC) boundaries were redrawn in the 2008 delimitation and therefore Lok Sabha elections before 2009 are not comparable with subsequent elections. The BJP won 116, 282 and 303 PCs in the 2009, 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections, respectively. The BJP won 95 out of the 116 PCs it won in 2009 in both the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Its 2019 tally of 303 PCs includes 55 PCs it did not win in 2014 (50 it contested and lost in 2014 and five where it did not contest in 2014). The BJP 2019 victories exclude the 34 PCs it won in 2014 (it lost 24 PCs and shared 10 PCs with allies). If one were to take the union of sets of PCs won by the BJP in 2009, 2014 and 2019, the total comes to 343 PCs. This is still 27 short of the 370 it is targeting to win in 2024.
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  Where did the BJP fail to retain or build on its 2014 victories in 2019?

  Of the 34 PCs the BJP won in 2014 but not in 2019, it did not contest 10 (its alliance partners did). Of the 24 where it contested but lost, the largest number was in Uttar Pradesh where the BJP faced a formidable challenge in the form of a Samajwadi Party - Bahujan Samaj Party alliance which is not going to be there in 2024. The rest of BJP’s 2019 losses in PCs which it won in 2014 are spread across states and cannot be attributed to any larger trend.
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  What will it take for the BJP to win PCs where it contested but lost in 2019?

  The BJP contested 436 PCs in the 2019 elections, of which it won 303. In the 133 PCs where it contested but lost, it finished second in 72 PCs and third or lower in 61 PCs. In terms of the gap between the BJP’s and the winner’s vote share in the 133 PCs which the BJP contested but lost, the BJP’s deficit was less than 1% of the total votes polled in 4 PCs, between 1%-5% in 14 PCs, 5%-10% in 23 PCs and 10% or more in 92 PCs. 61 out of the 92 PCs where the BJP’s margin of loss was 10% or more are located in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Telangana, and West Bengal. This list excludes Tamil Nadu because the All India Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam was a part of the NDA in 2019. So far, the AIADMK is not a part of the NDA for the 2024 polls.
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  Which states can help the BJP get past its target of 370?

  This is one of the most interesting questions as far as the BJP’s political prospects in 2024 are concerned. If one were to look at the union of PCs which have been won by the BJP in 2009, 2014 or 2019 elections, it has won 100% of the PCs in 15 states and UTs (out of these, only five, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, and Gujarat have at least 10 PCs) which account for 112 of the total 543 PCs in India. If we lower the threshold to 95% PCs (it will add Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh to the list of 15), the 17 such states and UTs account for 221 of India’s 543 PCs. In two key states, namely Maharashtra (48 PCs) and Bihar (40 PCs), the BJP has won only 58% of the seats in any election since 2009, but it swept the states along with its allies in both 2014 and 2019 elections. In these states, the BJP’s and NDA’s overall tally will also depend on seat sharing between allies. On the other hand, the union of BJP’s wins since 2009 in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, and Telangana combined is just 7%. These four states send 101 MPs to the Lok Sabha. On a standalone basis, the BJP’s best chances of increasing its seat count are from the states of West Bengal and Odisha where it emerged as a strong opposition party in the Lok Sabha elections -- unless the BJP surprises its opponents by breaking new ground in the southern states.