What exit polls show: Modi finishing what Vajpayee began in 1998

The most important takeout from the rash of exit polls now being unleashed on TV channels is not the impending NDA victory, but the scale of the Modi wave and the emergence of the Bharatiya Janata Party as the new pivot of Indian politics . The polls project 270-282 seats for the BJP-led NDA, comfortably close to the half-way mark. Which means there’s no formal need for allies. But allies there will be aplently - as we shall see. Despite a hard-to-live-down Hindutva hardliner image, Narendra Modi has taken the BJP mainstream and centre-stage, completing a process begun by Atal Behari Vajpayee in the late 1990s. The difference between 1998 and 2014 is this: 15 years ago, the hard and soft parts resided in two separate individuals: Vajpayee was Vikas Purush (development icon), and LK Advani the Loh Purush (iron man). [caption id=“attachment_1520269” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  File photo of Atal Behari Vajpayee, Narendra Modi and LK Advani. AFP.[/caption] This time, the Loh and Vikas personalities have come together in Modi to show the Power of One. This is why the wave is stronger than in 1998/1999. The BJP’s need to present itself as two different personalities has ended. And by winning the 2014 election – we still have to wait for four more days to confirm if the exit polls are close to the truth, but the trends are clear – Modi has effectively mainstreamed the BJP despite his so-called “divisive” personality. If the Congress was the pivot of national politics till almost the mid-1990s, and which re-emerged once more in 2009, in large parts of India it is now being replaced by the BJP. A caveat first: opinion and exit polls have been wrong before, most notoriously in 2004, when a predicted NDA victory turned out to a UPA celebration. This time, too, there could be some surprises, especially when vote shares are cavalierly converted to seats for parties in various states. One need not even be surprised if the NDA marginally falls short of 272 or the BJP stops at around 200 seats. However, that would still leave the BJP as the new pivot of Indian politics. Reason: seats are not the point, vote shares are. The most interesting bit of stats in the Lokniti-CSDS-CNN-IBN post-poll (which is not an exit poll, but a poll done after the elections by asking people how they had voted) is this: Narendra Modi has taken the BJP to its highest ever vote share of 34 percent, and the NDA to a spectacular 40.5 percent (against the UPA’s 32.8 percent in 2009). Now, even if this number is off by about 2-3 percent, it would still leave the BJP as the party for whom one-third of India has voted – something no party has achieved after 1984. The break-up shown by the post-poll survey is 34 percent for BJP, and 6.5 percent for its allies, making for 40.5 percent in all. If you can pull 30 percent on your own, you can pull in allies – and scare some of them into backing you. For the Congress, the figures are 22 percent (one of its lowest totals). Together with the allies, it gets another 3.5 percent, for a total of 25.5 percent. There is a huge 15 percent gap in vote share between NDA and UPA – and a large part of this cannot but be because of the Modi effect. In theory, this kind of vote difference should be enough to give the BJP a majority of its own and the NDA an overwhelming dominance of the 16th Lok Sabha (16 May could still give us this upside), but this is where the exit polls cannot help us. A large chunk of the BJP vote comes from places where it won’t get too many seats. For example, states like Kerala and Tamil Nadu and West Bengal. In Kerala, the Lokniti polls says that the BJP may have pulled in 10 percent of the vote. It probably won’t get any seats, though Thiruvananthapuram is an outside possibility. In West Bengal, BJP gets 15 percent all on its own, displacing the Congress (with 13 percent) as the No 3 force behind Trinamool and Left Front.  Again the party may not get more than a seat or two in this state. But the key is percentage share. A 15 percent vote share in Bengal, with its 62.6 million voters, would, with a 70 percent voter turnout, give you a total of 6.5 million BJP votes in Bengal. But they don’t yield seats – not more than one or two. But you have shaking power. When you have 10-15-20 percent of the vote, you have a base to build on. Also, this level of vote share makes you a worthwhile alliance partner – or a potential threat - locally. For example, Naveen Patnaik unceremoniously dumped the BJP as partner in Odisha in 2009 due to the Kandhamal riots. The BJP was wiped out in that election. This time it is back as the No 2 party in Odisha with a 29 percent post-poll vote share. The next time, it will be able to mount a challenge in the state either by itself or by tying up with other regional splinter parties. A decent vote share can be used as leverage to get partners on board for the NDA. Modi himself hinted at this during his Times Now interview when Arnab Goswami asked him whether he was shooing away Mamata Banerjee by attacking her too much in election rallies. Arnab asks him: “Modiji, don’t you feel you should have kept the door open with Mamata and Mayawati?” Modi replies: “This can also be a strategy to keep the door open.” Goswami was foxed: “I didn’t understand.” Modi replies enigmatically: “Whatever I wanted to explain, I have. This can also be a tactic to keep the door open.” The point Modi probably wanted to underscore was this: while having low strength in a state may appear non-threatening to a potential ally, showing that you have teeth and capable of inflicting damage on your opponent is a way of telling her ‘I can do you damage, unless..” This is how Modi may be keeping the door open for allies. This is the bottomline message of the exit and post-polls. Modi has made BJP bankable, both as a powerful ally and a potential adversary who can do you harm. Love him or hate him, Modi has effectively ended the BJP’s  isolation. Modi has shown that power is the key to allies, not a good smile or chummy attitudes. The BJP has moved centre-stage with this election. Modi is completing the job Vajpayee began – in his own style.