If Modi wants to be PM, he has to win UP hands down

By Yashwant Deshmukh First things first. Cvoter’s Mood of The Nation survey for India Today clearly shows that Narendra Modi is the most popular leader in the country today. It also shows clear empirical evidence that he is helping the BJP gain critical vote share, which the party has been continuously losing over the last one decade. The survey reveals that the BJP is on an “upswing” in almost all the states, including Bihar, where Modi is actually performing better than Nitish Kumar. The numbers clearly show that Rahul Gandhi is way behind Modi in terms of popular appeal as well as ability to catch votes. A majority of youngsters are tilting towards Modi rather than the young Gandhi. [caption id=“attachment_1040737” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Gujarat CM Narendra Modi. Reuters[/caption] But here’s the problem: All this and more is still not adding up for the NDA . They seem to be far from making any alternative government at the moment; leave alone giving a stable government. The reason is that government formation needs 272+ numbers and inspite of a very strong Modi undercurrent, the electoral math is not adding up, as of today, for the BJP. In India’s first-past-the-post (FPTP) leadership popularity may not convert to vote share; it may not convert to desired number of seats. In a presidential system, Modi would easily win hands down; but in our FPTP system, the critical determinant of victory in vote share in crucial states. Given the wariness of allies about Modi, his chances of entering 7, Race Course Road depend on his party going past the 200-seat mark; but this is impossible without Modi sweeping Uttar Pradesh. Which is where we should begin this story. In fact, we can say clearly that Modi’s elevation is totally dependent on how he and his party fare in UP. UP will make or break Modi’s candidature. The Cvoter survey shows that the BJP is on an “upswing” in the state; but the problem in UP is that all contests tends to be multi-cornered. Any party needs a minimum of 20 percent of the popular vote to get a reasonable number of seats; which explains the Congress’ good performance in the 2009 elections. The match in UP is decided not only by how many votes you poll, but how much your opposition vote is divided. It is very possible for a party to get 24 percent of the vote and still get only 10 seats. But if you cross 25 percent, you may get more than double that number. If you get 26 percent votes, you can easily cross 30 seats. On getting 27 percent, you can actually cross the 40-seat-mark. If any party crosses 30 percent, it might even get up to 60 seats out of 80. This is precisely the point where the BJP was in the 1998 election. After hitting this “high,” the BJP actually slipped to a mere 10-plus seats in the last election. Our latest survey in Uttar Pradesh reveals that the BJP is eating up all urban votes that had slipped to the Congress in 2009. In the process it might just about touch 20 percent voteshare, which is good enough to decimate the Congress but will end up helping the SP and BSP win more seats. If Narendra Modi wants to get to Delhi, his first target should be to take the BJP vote share to at least 25 percent in the state. But at this point, it will ensure the fall of the Mayawati’s BSP as Brahmin voters swing back to the BJP. This movement will add a few seats to the BJP’s kitty but it will help the SP win more seats as Muslims will polarise towards it. However; the real game will start if Modi manages to take the BJP vote share beyond 25 percent. After that critical mass; every 1 percent vote gain yield the BJP a big number of seats and start bringing the SP tally down. If Modi manages 30 percent in Uttar Pradesh, we will see the BJP tally rise to more than 50 seats from Uttar Pradesh alone and Narendra Modi can even dream of taking the BJP beyond the previous best 1999 tally at the national level. If that happens, then the NDA tally might reach up to 230-plus and only Jayalalithaa would be required to swear in Modi as next PM. Easy as this calculation seems, getting 30 percent of the vote in UP is not as easy as it seems from a distance. The 10 percent additional vote it requires from the current 20 percent it seems capable of getting involves a long, hard slog for Modi. For Narendra Modi, the gains from UP are more important that the gains he can make in the other 27 states of India. If he wins big in UP, no one can stop him from becoming the next Prime Minister of India. If not, even he knows how his options are limited. And that latest survey tells us why. If a ‘Best of BJP’ tally is counted across the timeline of the last three decades, where we take the BJP’s best-ever performance in each state and add them up to arrive at a dream number, it actually adds up to only 251 seats, which is still 21 seats short of a simple majority. There is an upper limit to what Modi can do alone. Even his strongest supporters dream merely of a 200-plus scenario. Even then, he needs allies. So, the bottomline is that without allies in major states, the NDA engine will halt with even Modi as driver. Period. The BJP emerged as the single largest party in Lok Sabha in 1998 and 1999 by projecting Vajpayee. We can argue that Modi has similar, or even bigger, momentum in his favour. But we must go back to 1998, when, without allies, Vajpayee could manage 182. He bowed out of office after 13 months when Amma pulled the rug from under him. Vajpayee was back in 1999 with almost the same number of seats – but this time he had a “surplus” of allies and seats beyond 300 plus in Parliament. No ally could blackmail him after that. It was again the basic miscalculation of dumping the DMK for Amma’s AIADMK at the wrong time which cost him the government in 2004. If the BJP had stayed with the DMK in 2004, not only would it have emerged as the single largest party, it might well have formed the government. Rather than the failure of “India Shining”, it was actually one critical ally (DMK) in one critical state (Tamil Nadu) which cost him the 2004 elections. Now imagine the current scenario where the on the entire “East Coast” of India the BJP is nowhere in the picture and without any ally. For the 1999 mandate, the BJP had to thank the TMC in West Bengal, the BJD in Orissa, the TDP in Andhra and the DMK in Tamil Nadu. All these states and partners have left the BJP for political reasons; and without getting them or some alternatives back to the fold, there is no way the NDA can come to power. On the plus side, there is no doubt that Modi has captured the imagination of the middle class and possibly rural India, too. His calling cards are good governance, effective administration and no-nonsense leadership. The youth and middle class are looking up to him wishfully; and the numbers in all opinion polls clearly attest to his ever-growing popularity. This is written on the wall in bold letters. However, what is actual rocket science, and what is written in fine print, is the fact that India does not have a presidential form of system. If it had, Vajpayee wouldn’t have lost in 2004 and Modi would have swept the polls today. We have a solid FPTP system where we vote for candidates and parties. The UPA has lost credibility and anti-incumbency sentiment is at an all-time high; almost at the level of the 1977 or 1989 elections. But the problem is that the anti-Congress front is scattered weirdly under several banners in the name of NDA, Third, Fourth or Fifth fronts. In reality, outside the NDA there is no “front” at all. The fact of the matter is, barring Mulayam Singh, Lalu Prasad and the Left Front, all other major political entities have been part of the NDA at one time or the other. Their main contest is actually with the Congress or the Left. They are “natural” allies of the BJP in their “anti-Congress” mandate. But somehow the issue of secularism is used for their own political needs. It is worth recalling that in 1998 all such parties voted against Vajpayee in parliament; very much in the name of secularism; but they all joined the NDA after the 1999 elections. One may argue that this was due to Vajpayee. I would argue that it was due to the strength of the BJP in the elections that forced these parties to join the NDA. All these leaders were in opposition and needed the growing vote bank of the BJP to put themselves back on track. As of today, most of them are ruling in many states; they can get to power on their own with the BJP’s support. Add to it the fact that the BJP has considerably weakened beyond a “threshold” minimum over the last decade and one understands why the BJP has to first build its own vote share before attracting allies. This is precisely what must have been in the RSS’s mind when it threw its weight behind Modi’s elevation. The task of Narendra Modi is straight forward and simple. It is to bring the BJP’s vote share to its 1998 levels by going alone. Please remember that in 1998 the BJP had polled almost 20 percent votes even in states like Andhra Pradesh and Orissa. It had polled almost 10 percent in states like West Bengal, Assam and Kerala, where the party was, and still is, considered “non-existent”.  It was this vote share that added up to critical mass, and forced the allies to drop the “secularism” rag and join the NDA in the larger cause of being “anti-Congress”. So the 1999 alliance was created from a point of strength, not weakness. The logical question is: can Modi take BJP to the same point of strength in terms of vote share in 2014? The answer is a resounding “yes”. From the data brought forth by all surveys and opinion polls, it is very clear that he has gained “critical mass” in terms of personal popularity. There is also empirical evidence that this popularity is slowly and steadily converting into a “critical mass” of vote share for BJP. Very soon the BJP voter share will start hurting the prospects of non-Congress parties in different states. Now comes the million dollar question: will the non-Congress parties sense this impending damage and join hands with the BJP? Or will they want to go through the same cycle as in 1998-1999, where they first reject the BJP and then come to terms with it to join a larger anti-Congress alliance? My guess is that they would very much like to reinvent the wheel. So the chances are, without any alliance, the Modi juggernaut will keep on increasing the BJP’s vote share till it reaches “critical mass” where it will start hurting the regional parties in different states. The casualties would include BJD in Orissa; AGP in Assam; INLD in Haryana; TRS in Telangana; JVM in Jharkhand and TDP in Seemandhra. In all these states; the increased BJP vote share will eventually help the Congress in a big way. In the states of West Bengal and Kerala; the direct beneficiary of the Modi undercurrent would be the CPM and the Left Front as the BJP is bound to cut the TMC and Congress votes in these states. But will this increase the BJP seats? The answer is a big “no”. In fact, it will find it difficult to cover up the loss and damage done by BS Yeddyurappa in Karnataka, Babulal Marandi in Jharkhand and Raj Thackeray in Maharashtra. It is absolutely critical for the BJP to figure out how to get them back in the NDA, if not in the party. Our survey shows that the BJP is doing well in Bihar alone and it can afford to go alone there regardless of the fact that the NDA split has actually opened a back door for Lalu Yadav’s RJD. If the Congress weaves back the 2004 alliance with RJD and LJP, then the minorities will polarise in favour of the UPA in Bihar, leaving the JD(U) high and dry. This leaves the grand old state of Uttar Pradesh to decide the future of the next Indian election. The state has been dictating Indian politics for the first five decades of Independence; but for last 10-and-odd years it has actually lost influence, as the Congress and BJP both got marginalised in the state, and the main state parties – SP and BSP – were used by the UPA for peripheral support. But UP is likely to come back to the limelight as this is the state Modi has to win – and win big – if he is to make it to the top job. Yashwant Deshmukh is Chief Editor of Cvoter, South Asia’s leading Public Opinion Analysis agency and the only Indian media group working on election research assignments across the globe. He tweets at @cvoter and could also be followed on www.teamcvoter.com