The Modi Effect in 2014 elections: A surprising new finding

This is probably the first of many studies that will attempt to place a value to the impact of the 'Modi' effect. I have used an unconventional method in attempting to do so given the limited availability of data

The chart below shows vote share data mapped from the 2009 Lok Sabha elections to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. As far as the interim years are concerned, the vote share for each party is updated each year by either retaining the Lok Sabha vote share for that state or using the data of the latest assembly election. Example: In case of Delhi, the 2009 vote share data was considered until 2012 but replaced with the assembly election data in 2013. In case of UP, 2009 vote share was considered until 2011 and replaced with the assembly data in 2012. The data for all parties for 2009 and 2014 was from the Lok Sabha elections completed during those years. Data considered for this analysis was from 18 states constituting 94% of parliamentary seats and the final vote share data was arrived by weighing by parliamentary seats and not voting population.

Here is what I found

a. The Congress had lost about 4% of its vote share between 2009 and end of 2013 (after the elections in Raj, MP, Chha and Delhi), while during the same period, the BJP lost 2% of its vote share between 2009 and 2013. Which means, the two large national parties had lost 6% vote share to their rivals between 2009 and 2013.

b. Between the end of 2013 and the Lok Sabha elections, the congress lost a further 5% of its vote share of which almost half of it was to the YSRCP and the rest half to everybody else. However, between end of 2013 and May 2014, the BJP gained an astonishing 14% vote share which can easily be attributed to the Modi Effect.

The second chart shows the estimated vote gain for the BJP from each of the 3 party categories. Contrary to popular belief,it appears that the bulk of BJP's additional votes seem to have come from really small state rivals and independents followed by larger state rivals and smaller national parties.

That the BJP ran a very smart campaign is well known but it appears that the ground campaign was very specifically targeted at voters who traditionally voted for parties outside the national or state mainstream. This may have come from focused on-ground campaigns as well as selection of candidates who represented these voting segments. More study is needed to understand the large scale defection of this group to the BJP. The take away for other parties is that besides many other things they should clearly understand this phenomenon quickly to be able to compete with the BJP in future elections.