For Mission 272, Modi will need a storm, and not just a wave

How many extra votes does Modi have to deliver to get his party past 272 seats in the next Lok Sabha on its own? The opinion polls held so far do not give the BJP’s Mission 272 any chance of success. The best the latest poll, by NDTV, gives is 195 seats to the BJP – which only makes it certain that the next coalition will be led by the BJP. Nothing more. With coalition partners, the NDA gets to 229, and the alliance will still need two or three major regional parties to huff and puff its way to 272. But is 272 on its own even possible?[caption id=“attachment_1444681” align=“alignnone” width=“300”]  BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi. PTI[/caption] Praveen Chakravarty, a founding trustee of IndiaSpend, a data journalism portal, has done some of that math and comes to this conclusion: if BJP is to achieve 50 percent of the seats, it will have to achieve a minimum of 5 percent more seats than its best-ever performance achieved in 18 major states. Put another way, the Modi wave will have to deliver at least an additional 5 percent over the best the party achieved in the past – going solo or in alliance. Chakravarty’s analysis in Business Standard tells us that of these 18 states, the BJP has done best by going solo in nine states, and best by being in alliance with other parties in the other nine. The solo states are Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Delhi, Gujarat, Jharkhand and Kerala (where it never gets any seats anyway). The states where the BJP has needed alliances to win a larger percentage of contested seats are Maharashtra, Bihar, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Assam, Punjab, and Haryana. While the solo states continue to remain solo this time, the alliance states where the BJP is going solo this time are Assam, West Bengal and Odisha. The party clearly cannot hope to pull off its best performance in these states going solo. The BJP’s best-ever winning ratio has been 45 percent of seats contested (both solo and alliance), and with this strike rate, the party (with some alliances) will reach 230 seats out of 509 contested. This is bang next to what NDTV projects (229). Chakravarty’s conclusion is this: “Had it been able to stitch up alliances with each of its regional partners to match its historical best, then this alliance’s best-ever historical performance in each state would have been 357 seats out of the 509 (70 percent of those contested). Thus, this ‘Modi wave’ needs to deliver a minimum of five percent (50-45 percent) more seats than the BJP’s best-ever historical performance.” Chakravarty’s analysis was done earlier this month when the Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh alliances were not clear. As things stand, the party won’t have alliances in Assam, Odisha and West Bengal – but it does have alliances in Tamil Nadu (with five minor parties) and Bihar (with LJP). In Telangana and Seemandhra, it is not clear how the party will fare even though it has an alliance with TDP. In Delhi, its solo performance may not be the best even due to the advent of the Aam Aadmi Party. For Mission 272, the Modi wave may have to be more than 5 percent higher than the BJP’s best ever winning ratio. He will need a storm, not just a wave. (For more on Chakravarty’s detailed math, read here)