Though there has been some waffling about it lately, most pollsters have predicted that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will end up with around 230 parliamentary seats on 23 May.
What then, explains the stickiness of the 230 seat prediction for the BJP in two somewhat different scenarios? It could be the fact that the number covers for all conceivable post-poll government formation scenarios.
It acknowledges that the BJP, together with its allies in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), has a slight edge in the government formation stakes, but does not completely rule out other possibilities. A 20-30 seat slip either way, a margin of error that pollsters and other crystal ball gazers believe they can live with – without embarrassing themselves – covers for a comfortable NDA win, or an Opposition government. Notably, no other number offers a similar luxury.
The general view all along has been that the NDA would struggle to match its 2014 showing in 2019, unless it made significant inroads into new states to make up for the inevitable losses in the several states it had more or less maxed. This is pretty much how things are supposed to have turned out if opinion polls are to be believed.
Too busy to read? Listen to this instead.
As per most polls, the NDA in 2019 will shed seats in almost every state it had swept in 2014 (a serious drop is projected only in Uttar Pradesh (UP) though; losses in others are projected in single digits) but will add enough to its tally from Odisha, Tamil Nadu (TN) and West Bengal (WB), to end up around the half-way (272-seat) mark.
But since no one could have foreseen what the Narendra Modi years would have in store, the peculiar issues that would take center stage during the campaign, or the poll alliances that were going to take shape, it is more likely that the clairvoyants are playing safe, and projecting numbers consistent with what has become a truism of sorts over the last five years.
There is good reason for the clairvoyants to play safe. The results of shiny, well-organised campaigns, such as the one the BJP is running now, have been unpredictable in the past. Forecasters over-estimated them in 2004 and 2009, and under-estimated them in 2014. More importantly, it is difficult to establish the extent to which the incumbent’s shrill rhetoric will resonate with the electorate. Winners of recent parliamentary elections did not rely on this; they either interrogated the rival’s vikas record and presented their own agenda for change (the Congress in 2004, the BJP in 2014), or showcased their performance (the UPA in 2009).
So, are there any real conclusions that can be drawn from the slew of opinion polls that we have seen? Perhaps, if one were to go beyond the headline numbers and look at the commonalities and differences in state-level findings across polls. These suggest three things:
Indeed all outcomes are possible. Which, of course, is only another reason to run with the 230 number!
(Manish Dubey is a policy analyst and crime fiction writer and can be contacted at @ManishDubey1972. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)