Predicting poll outcomes by all accounts is a perilous job. Elections are analysed on past trends. Electorates have proven wiser than pundits more often. They aren't prisoners of the past, as they script history elections after elections. Amid the maddening electioneering, data stay firm with serenity, inviting political strategists to steer narratives to help their masters for smart politics. Data for Delhi suggest the air in the city smells of a cliffhanger of the poll outcome.
THE ruling Aam Admi Party (AAP) had weaved a magical spell in 2015. Political rivals of the incumbent chief minister Arvind Kejriwal were left shell-shocked with the final scoreboard. That was 67-3 and a naught for the Congress. The BJP had the worst tally. The saffron outfit still bears the taunt. Climbing from an abyss like situation of the single digit figure five years ago to go past the half way mark of 35 would indeed be an unprecedented somersault. For AAP, it will equally be the groundswell of popular anger to slump from the level of 67 to 30s or less would be quite a fall with thud.
The AAP isn't just another political outfit. The party was born after Anna Hazare made the political air of Delhi pregnant with negativism during 2012-13. Negativism midwifed anarchism. Kejriwal proved an undisputed icon of the politics of anarchism. His foes were left guilt-stricken, as they bent backwards to prove their credentials of honesty and probity in public life. They vowed to innovate and herald an honest and people friendly governance. The tribe of Sheila Dikshit, Harsh Vardhan and Kiran Bedi searched for wood when their boats had already sunk.
The 2015 scoreboard read: AAP 54.3 per cent vote share and 67 Assembly seats; BJP 32.3 per cent vote share and 3 Assembly seats; and the Congress 9.7 per cent vote share and zero Assembly seats.
But that wasn't the maiden electoral venture of AAP in politics. Kejriwal cut off his umbilical chord with his godfather Anna Hazare to contest the December 2013 Assembly polls. The cadre of the AAP wasn't yet properly built. The party was still sloganeering.
The 2013 scoreboard read: AAP 29.5 per cent vote share and 28
Assembly seats; BJP 33 per cent vote share and 31 Assembly seats; and
the Congress 24.6 per cent vote share and eight Assembly seats.
In span of a few months, Kejriwal built the cadre for AAP, with donations pouring from the affluent class within the country and abroad, helping him to maintain an army of well paid functionaries. With the likes of Kumar Vishwas, Prashant Bhushan, Yogendra Yadav leading the most vicious attacks on the mainstream political parties, Kejriwal strode as the alternative politics warrior, swearing to slay the rivals in the electoral battlefield. The Congress fell for the trap, and helped Kejriwal become chief minister. That bloated the persona of Kejriwal further, and soon he didn't need the Congress crutches. He read the politics well, and played the victim card to the hilt.
People flocked to Kejriwal, with 54.3 per cent vote share in 2015. His rivals turned into pygmies. The new political icon was born. But within a few months, drift set in the Kejriwal camp, as all those who bloated him into an extraordinary exponent of alternative politics parted ways after much breast-beating.
TWO years later, the AAP faced the litmus test to repeat the magical spell of 2015. The BJP had been in power in the municipal corporation of Delhi for a decade, completing two full terms. The AAP cadre was mobilised to oust the BJP from the MCD, which, incidentally, has over 90 per cent connect with the people on a daily basis. The BJP was up against significant anti-incumbency. The BJP chief Amit Shah sought shelter in simple strategy; he just told the incumbent Councillors that they should climb the political ladder and focus on contesting the next Assembly elections. The BJP fielded fresh crop of the party workers.
The 2017 municipal elections' scoreboard read: AAP 26 per cent vote share and 49 seats; BJP 37 per cent vote share and 181 seats; and
the Congress 21 per cent vote share and 31 seats.
From 54.3 per cent vote share in 2015, AAP came down to 26 per cent; the BJP after staying firm with 33 per cent (2013) and 32.3 per cent (2015) rose to 37 per cent; and the Congress made a smart recovery from an embarrassing 9.7 per cent (2015) to 21 per cent.
In 2017 again the AAP got another jolt. The outfit had found fertile ground in Punjab, and was seen on course to wrest power from Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD)-BJP combine. The Delhi drift had its own parallel in Punjab for AAP. The Congress' old horse Captain Amarinder Singh strode high to leave AAP huffing and puffing at distant second.
PEOPLE undeniably have made distinctions between local and national elections. Chhatishgarh, Odisha and Jharkhand have shown that the electorate can with ease make distinct choices in Lok Sabha and Assembly elections. In Odisha, the electorate cast votes simultaneously for Lok Sabha and Assembly polls, and showed preferences for Narendra Modi in New Delhi and Navin Patnaik in Bhubaneshwar.
Still, the data are significant, for Delhi appears on a certain course. The BJP swept the Lok Sabha elections in Delhi, with the perfect scoreboard of 7-0. The 2019 endorsed the previous scorecard, with scales going higher.
The 2014 scoreboard read: AAP 32.90 per
cent vote share and zero seat; BJP 46.40 per cent vote share and seven Lok Sabha seats; and the Congress 15.10 per cent vote share and zero
seat.
The BJP had seen a negative swing of about 14 per cent in the 2015 Assembly elections. The AAP correspondingly registered over 21 per cent of positive swing, mostly gaining at the expense of the Congress.
The 2019 scoreboard read: AAP 18 per
cent vote share and zero seat; BJP 56.58 per cent vote share and seven
Lok Sabha seats; and the Congress 18 per cent vote share and zero
seat.
For BJP, the scores in recent elections are 33 per cent (2013), 46.40 per cent (2014), 32.3 per cent (2015), 37 per cent (2017), 56.58 per cent (2019). In the five recent polls, the BJP hasn't gone down 32.3 per cent even when the party arguably shot in the foot by fielding an ex-cop Kiran Bedi in 2015.
The AAP in contrast has seen wild swing of vote share from 18 per cent (2019) to 54.3 per cent in 2015. The graph is surely not steady. The AAP, in fact, came third in 2019.
The 2015 elections in Delhi was a watershed moment. The BJP saw 14 per cent vote share knocked away in the face of the magical spell of AAP. Delhi was high on romance in 2015. The level of romance was two per cent higher in 2019, with adoration for a different entity.
The BJP's worst case scenario could be another 14 per cent drift, which may leave the saffron outfit still with 42 per cent popular votes. To level, the AAP will need 24 per cent of the positive swing from 2019. And, that would surely be reckoned a daunting task.
Delhi may throw a tantalizingly cliffhanger election outcome on February 11.
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