How BJP gained ground in Haryana

NEWDELHI: As Haryana braces for assembly elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is looking to retain power. The party has quickly evolved as the strongest force in the region in last five years while it was not even among the front-runners earlier.

Even as the BJP had been contesting both general elections and assembly polls in Haryana over the past four decades, it was a laggard until October 2014, when it won a majority in the assembly for the first time. The party increased its 2009 assembly tally of four to 47 in 2014, while its vote share increased by 24 percentage points to 33%. The BJP had never won more than 16 assembly seats or polled more than 11% votes in any Haryana assembly poll earlier. (See chart 1)

This surge in the party’s strength in Haryana came months after it managed to win seven of the eight parliamentary seats it contested in the state in the 2014 general elections.

Earlier, the BJP did not only fail to win a significant number of assembly seats in Haryana, it could not even finish second in most of them. In the 2005 and 2009 assembly polls, the party won just two and four seats respectively while it finished second in just nine and eight. In 2014, it won 47 and came second in 17 others.

The BJP managed to consolidate its support in Haryana over the last five years, as per the results of the 2019 general elections, when the party won all 10 seats in the state for the first time. The 58% vote share was its highest in any general or assembly elections in Haryana. The assembly constituency-wise breakup of the 2019 elections shows the BJP was leading in 78 out of 90 seats and came second in 11 others, leaving just one constituency – Kalka – where it trailed behind the Congress and the Indian National Lok Dal.

Not only is the BJP managing to lead in more assembly seats, it is doing so with more decisive numbers. In the seats it won in 2014 assembly polls, its average victory margin – the difference between the votes received by the winner and runner-up as a proportion of total valid votes polled – was 17%. In 2019 polls, this figure increased to 34%. (See chart 2)

The BJP was able to increase its vote share across Haryana, in both rural and urban regions. However, its performance was slightly better in districts with a higher urban population.

The BJP’s vote share was lower in districts with a higher share of rural population in both 2014 assembly elections and 2019 general elections. In the 2019 general elections, the party was leading in all assembly constituencies in districts with less than 40% rural population. In other districts, it was leading in about 80% seats. (See charts 3A and 3B)

In the 2009 assembly elections, the BJP could not win a single assembly seat in 17 out of Haryana’s 21 districts. In the 2014 assembly elections, there were just three districts where the BJP could not win a seat while it won all seats in seven other districts. In the 2019 general election, the party won all assembly seats in 15 districts while it could not win a single seat in just one district, Mewat, where its vote share of 23% was the lowest among all districts. Mewat is the only Muslimmajority district of Haryana.