Himachal Pradesh Assembly polls: Ghost of past elections looms in swing state

Will the outcome be different in the upcoming election polls? Two recent trends tell a different story and may affect the outcome.

Elections to the Himachal Pradesh Assembly on November 12, results on December 8 (representative image)

By Ashish Ranjan: The one constant in Himachal Pradesh’s parliamentary elections in recent years is that the fate of the two main parties – the Bharatiya Janata party and the Congress – changes every five years. Multiple data points suggest so much.

Take a look at the following:

1. Of the 68 constituencies in the state, as many as 38 can be categorized as rocking chairs. These are the seats that switched sides in the last two elections. In other words, more than half of the seats have a very high propensity to vote the incumbent away.

2. The difference between the winning side and the runner-up remains in the margin of five percentage points. What it means is that a three to four percent vote erosion can make a big difference in the election results. However, the 2017 elections turned out to be slightly different in that Congress trailed the BJP by nearly seven percentage points.

3. Of the three regions in the state, Kangra (25 assembly seats) has an even greater tendency to go both ways. The BJP’s voting share in the region rose from just under 37 percent in 2012 to nearly 50 percent in 2017, a positive swing of 13 percent in a five-year span. The big swing caused the number of seats of the BJP to increase from eight to eighteen between 2012 and 2017.

4. In the other two regions – Mandi and Shimla – while the BJP has had an election lead here, Shimla has traditionally favored Congress.

Amid election after election swinging political fortunes, the outcome of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls put forward a very different scenario. The BJP recorded a landslide victory, taking more than two-thirds (69 percent) of the total vote in the state.

In addition, Congress’ vote share fell below 30 percent, which was a first. The vote share gap between the BJP and Congress in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls was a whopping 42 percentage points.

Will the outcome be different in the upcoming election polls? Two recent trends tell a different story and may affect the outcome.

Evidence shows that the BJP invariably gets more votes in Lok Sabha than in election polls. For example, the BJP’s vote share fell from nearly 50 percent in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections to less than 39 percent in the parliamentary elections held three years later. Similarly, the party saw an erosion of votes in the 2017 parliamentary elections compared to the Lok Sabha elections held three years earlier.

The outcome of the recent mid-term polls also indicates that it may be difficult for the BJP to repeat what happened in 2019.

In 2021, interim polls were held in the assembly seats of Arki, Fatehpur and Jubbal-Kotkhai along with the Mandi Lok Sabha constituency. Congress won all four seats, in stark contrast to what happened in 2019.

In Fatehpur, Arki and Jubbal-Kotkhai, the BJP saw massive erosion of its vote share. It was between 24 and 54 percentage points. The gain of the Congress was directly proportional to the loss of the BJP. The poll’s verdict shows that the pendulum swung the other way last year.

Will the state return to the average of nearly 40 percent votes for the two main parties and the winner by a narrow margin over the runner-up?

Whatever the outcome, the state is certainly headed for a closely watched contest.

(The writer is a political analyst and co-founder of Datalok.in)

Also Read: AAP Himachal Pradesh 2022 Candidates List: Complete List of 68 Candidates & Constituencies