2019 alliance math — road to nowhere | The Indian Express

2019 alliance math — road to nowhere | The Indian Express

Written by Surjit S Bhalla |Updated: February 23, 2019 8:13:40 am

The writer is Contributing Editor at The Indian Express, and Consulting Editor at Network 18

2019 alliance math — road to nowhere

Mahagathbandhan may not work in 2019 due to internal contradictions. The alliance’s problem is that the Congress is a natural enemy of important regional parties

There are four important facts surrounding this election, facts suggesting that the grand alliance may have a tougher fight than envisioned by the opinion polls in January (Illustration by C R Sasikumar)

They say that a week is a long time in politics, so what might a month be? In January, opinion polls were sanguine, and unanimous, about a hung Parliament. The range of seats, regardless of the polling organisation, was 80-120 seats for the Congress and 180-220 for the BJP. If one took the central tendency, then the Congress with 100 seats was a better bet as the lead party in the next government.

A month or so later, while no new opinion polls have appeared, the mood has gradually shifted towards the BJP/NDA. Pulwana has happened, and the government response might affect the final outcome. We don’t know. What we do know, post the budget presentation, is that the odds have shifted ever so marginally in the BJP’s favour. The shifting odds have to do with a historical contradiction — the Congress party is a natural enemy of several important regional parties.**

Analysis suggests that a large part of the shift in the BJP’s fortunes are due to cracks within the Mahagathbandhan (grand alliance). It appears that the fight is not between the alliance and the BJP — but between the alliance members themselves. For the Mahagathbandhan, it might very well be the case “we have seen the enemy and it is us”. This article is not a forecast of what will happen — it is just a documentation of what history suggests might happen. Forecasting elections in the best of times is a minefield where even angels fear to tread; three months before, a forecast without an opinion poll is suicidal for a mere mortal. I am not ready to commit forecast hara-kiri just yet.

There are four important facts surrounding this election, facts suggesting that the grand alliance may have a tougher fight than envisioned by the opinion polls in January.

Fact 1: There are only two national parties — the BJP and Congress. The choice for any political party is to either go alone, or go with an alliance. The option of “home alone” is no longer present for most regional parties. The last hold-out, Tamil Nadu, will, for the first time, have two alliances fighting each other — AIADMK-BJP and DMK-INC.

Fact 2: The BJP, in only its second electoral foray in 1989 obtained a national voteshare of 11.5 per cent and 86 seats in Parliament, a number nearly twice as much as the 44 seats obtained by the Congress in 2014. The rise of BJP and the fall of the Congress is best exemplified by this simple statistic — the BJP in its second election gained twice as many seats as the Congress did in its 16th election and 130 years of existence. Result: The BJP a rising party; Congress a declining national party, and the decline is on a slippery slope. More than an alliance — a large swing in its favour — maybe needed to bolster its (and the alliance’s) fortunes.