Elections 2019: Key takeaways

• Landslide victory for Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party

• BJP wins 303 seats on its own, 21 more than its 2014 tally

• BJP-led National Democratic Alliance wins 353 Lok Sabha seats

• With gains in new areas, the BJP vote share nationally has risen from 31% to approximately 37.5%

• Of the 603.7 million votes polled in this election, more than 226 million have gone to the BJP —

a 32% increase over the 171 million votes it won in 2014

• Like in 2014, the BJP victory revolved around Modi: each vote for BJP went into “Modi’s account”

• Modi won his seat from Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh by a massive margin

• BJP president Amit Shah enters the Lok Sabha, for the first time, from Gandhinagar in Gujarat

• BJP strategy of contesting a presidential-style election paid off again

• The 2014 campaign was a campaign of hope, one in which Modi sold India a vision for the future, the 2019 campaign was in large part negative — the BJP reminded the people of what might happen if it was not voted back.

• The verdict marks a clear acceptance by the masses of the BJP’s idea of ‘cultural nationalism’, and established the importance of ‘national pride’ in determining voting patterns.

• IAF strikes in Balakot inside Pakistan played a critical role in boosting the narrative of muscular

nationalism

Congress and other losers

• The Congress won 122 million votes out of the 600 million votes cast in Election 2019

• Congress just managed to raise its tally from 44 seats in 2014 to 52 in 2019 — contrary to expectations and perception

• The party does not qualify to get Leader of the Opposition status with 52 seats; 55 seats (one tenth of the number of members of the Lok Sabha) are required to make that mark

• Personal failure for Rahul Gandhi? Or existential threat and the end of the road for the Grand Old Party which won India its independence from colonial rule and ruled for over 50 years since 1947?

• Gandhi was not only the face of the party campaign, he also chose to turn the narrative into a largely personalised one between himself and Modi.

• The ‘chowkidar chor hai’ (watchman-Modi-is a thief ) slogan bombed badly and did not resonate

in the votes cast

• His failure to retain his seat in the family stronghold of Amethi is a stinging indictment: Congress won Amethi 11 times in 13 elections since 1967; nine times by a Gandhi family member (Rahul had won it in 2004, 2009, 2014) and twice by family loyalist Satish Sharma

• His victory from Wayanad in Kerala ensures his presence in parliament

• Rahul took over as party chief in 2017 and was credited with last year’s state assembly victories in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. The BJP wrested those states in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls

• Contrary to expectations, Gandhi’s sibling Priyanka Vadra failed to make any electoral impact in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections

• Leading losers in the Congress, after Rahul Gandhi, include Jyotiraditya Scindia, Sheila Dikshit, Sushmita Deb and Milind Deora, whose candidature was endorsed by India’s richest

man, Mukesh Ambani

• The Congress has only performed well in the two southernmost states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu,

in alliance with the DMK, and in Punjab

• Congress, the original pan-India party, does not have a parliamentary presence in 17 states of India, having ceded that space to the BJP

Regional losers

• Regional satraps, beginning with Chandrababu Naidu and his Telegu Desam Party in Andhra Pradesh, and former Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda and his Janata Dal (S) in Karnataka to Arvind Kejriwal and the AAP in Delhi were wiped out

• Mamata Banerjee and her Trinamool Congress in West Bengal and Lalu and Tejashwi Yadav and the RJD in Bihar, have been severely damaged Regional winners

• M.K. Stalin and the DMK in Tamil Nadu, the YSR Congress led by Jagan Reddy in Telangana and the Naveen Patnaik-led BJD in Odisha were the only regional parties to perform well