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The Indian Elections: Why Everyone Got It Wrong

The tables are empty, the dance floor is deserted; and the astrologers, psephologists, print and electronic media persons are busy explaining why they got the last general elections results so wrong. Everyone was surprised, including the political parties that had lost, and have won. Why?

The psephologists and political journalists are busy constructing statistical tables and arguments explaining their failure to anticipate the elections outcome correctly. These range from differences in voter turnout, although it is unclear whether heavy polling indicated the voter’s rejection or a reiteration of faith in the incumbent government. Then there is the caste and communal factor on which future-predictors have written tomes, although it remains uncertain how the voter would vote if two or more members of the same caste/community offered themselves as candidates for the same seat. Volumes have also been written on the ‘swing’ factor; which leads to the addition or subtraction of two or three percent in the votes cast making a marked difference to the final results. This is an in-built deficiency of the first-past-the-post voting system followed by India, although the proportional representation system followed by Sri Lanka, for instance, has proved no better.

These self-justificatory, self-exculpatory explanations to clarify explain why the pundits went wrong are inadequate. The truth is that after 13 general elections, and several elections to State Assemblies, local bodiesâ€â€�urban and rural, cooperative societies, the Indian voter is far cannier than his researchers. Rarely, if ever, will he indicate his real preferences, choosing to be evasive, and, if harassed, indicating a choice that may be the opposite of what he believes. A fatal inadequacy of most surveys, opinion polls, and exit polls is that they are held in urban areas or roadside villages due to transport and access problems. That leaves out the interior villages, but also large areas where the law and order situation does not allow survey teams to function. Apart from Kashmir and the mafia-controlled parts of North Bihar and Eastern U.P., some 7 States [Bihar, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra] are partially under the control of Naxalites and left extremist outfits. Exclusion of these large swathes of territory from the surveys has distorted their conclusions. 

Despite these inadequacies in the poll analyses made by the ‘professionals’, an educated  guess regarding the election results would reveal three basic factors underlying  them.

First, an anti-incumbency sentiment was definitely obtaining. [Significantly, the party/ coalition in power were unseated on seven occasions in the last nine general elections.] The situation in the State Assembly elections was similar, apparent from the unseating of the Chandra Babu government in Andhra Pradesh and the S M Krishna government in Karnataka. A few months earlier the Congress governments in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh were swept out of power; only Delhi [Shiela Dixit] remained unaffected.

Second, it would exaggerate to suggest that an urban-rural divide is obtaining, with the city population opting for the government in power, but villagers voting for the opposition. The poor have a large presence in the cities�some 35-40 percent is slum dwellers; equally, large landholding classes/ castes are to be found in the villages. Generalisations about an urban-rural divide obtaining are untenable, but what seems clear is that the under-privileged and oppressed and the poor have voted for change. The privileged and oppressors and better off sections were naturally in favour of the status quo. But, the anomaly in India is that the poor go out to vote; the middle and upper classes stay at home discussing politics, but without bothering to exercise their franchise. This reality went against the BJP and its allies.

Third, the more specific reason for the BJP’s and its NDA allies’ defeat at the polls is that they started believing their own propaganda  about India ‘shining’  and people ‘feeling good’. Besides, the ruling party fell between two stools by trying to be too clever by half, and confusing their own cadres and supporters. Vajpayee presented the ‘moderate’ face of the BJP, making secular noises and peace overtures to Pakistan, to garner the Muslim vote, while Advani made the ‘muscular’ statements and undertook a ‘rath yatra’ to harvest the Hindu vote. Unfortunately, these efforts to work both ends of the street only succeeded in alienating the Muslim voter and puzzling the Hindu voter.

The 14th Indian general elections marked a negative vote being cast against the BJP dominated NDA government, which translates feebly into a positive vote by the electorate for the Congress and its UPA allies. Whether the present parties in power have imbibed any wisdom from their predecessors’ mistakes remains unclear, but they might recollect with profit the admonition that “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”