Vote shares of a party is a proxy metric which is used to estimate the level of support the party enjoys across the country. Vote share is calculated by dividing the total votes secured by the party by the total votes polled across the country in all the 543 seats
Vote share of BJP in 2014 elections is 31% - a huge 11% gap over the next highest Cong. Over the last 30 years, since the inception of BJP, this is how the vote shares have moved:
Fig 1: Vote share from 1984 - 2014 for BJP & Cong
If we notice, what started as a 40% gap in 1984 elections, started slowly tapering off as congress started weakening and BJP started gaining with each election. The inflection point was 1998 - when BJP and Cong vote shares were equal. Interestingly, BJP's vote share started going south again and dropped in 1999, 2004 and 2009, before finally taking a leap in 2014. The most weak performance however was in 2009 - when there was a huge gap of 10% between Congress and BJP. The flux years of 1998 to 2004 - when Cong & BJP vote shares was +/- 5% of each other offer an interesting insight, if we look at the numbers of seats secured by both the parties -
Fig 2: Seats won from 1984 - 2014 for BJP & Cong
Even though Cong has higher vote shares in 1998, 1999 - BJP managed to win 41 more seats in 1998 and 68 more in 1999. The reason is that BJP's votes are concentrated in fewer seats, and also from 1998 onwards BJP contested with alliance partners, hence contested from lower number of seats. So while BJP concentrated on seats where it was relatively stronger and managed to convert more seats, whereas Congress spread itself thin and converted fewer seats.
Since vote share, as its traditionally calculated, is dependent on seats contested, a party which is contested from more seats stands to gain votes (and hence vote share) but not necessarily seats. I've looked at vote share from a different angle - Vote share in seats contested. I define this as follows -
BJP was born in 1980 and the first Lok Sabha elections it participated in was in 1984. Now, the 1984 election was a huge wave election for Congress, in terms of vote share and seats secured, it was its best performance, even better than 1952 performance. BJP contested in 229 (and won only 2) but its VSSC was at a respectable 18% even back then.
Fig 3: Seats contested (Bar) & VSSC (line) from 1984 - 2014 for BJP
Since then, BJP has steadily built through the 3 decades with a minor blip in 1991 (behind a huge 2X expansion in number of seats contested) and a decline in 2004 and 2009. The graph above confirms the fact that 2009 was one of BJP's worst performance ever. In fact, if we exclude the wave elections of 1984, 2009 is THE worst performance ever.
To note, in years 1999 and 2014, BJP secured almost the same level of VSSC - ~40%, but ended up winning 100 more seats in 2014 vs 1999. This is largely behind the increase in number of seats contested - 339 in 1999, and 428 in 2014. Essentially, this means BJP has successfully expanded its footprint across a much larger part of the country in 2014 compared to 1999. However, there's one more factor, which contributed immensely to the record-breaking 2014 mandate.
Fig 4: Seats contested (Bar) & VSSC (line) from 1984 - 2014 for Congress
In 1999, Congress which won 114 seats, had 33% VSSC in the 453 seats it contested. By 2014 however, VSSC had shrunk to 22%, even though the number of seats contested was largely the same. Of particular note, is the steady decline in Congress VSSC from 1984 to 2014. Even though there was a slight recovery in 1999-2009, it was never able to attain even the 1991 level, though it contests in far fewer seats than it did till 1996.
Fig 5: VSSC comparison from 1984 - 2014 for BJP & Congress
A comparison of VSSC from 1984-2014 shows that Congress is almost in the same condition that BJP found itself in till 1991. In other words, polity in India has remained unipolar - with BJP occupying the dominant pole position and congress relegated to a distant second. 1996-2009 was the period when both BJP and Congress had similar levels of VSSC, and what can be called a bi-polar polity. In the long range, BJP has taken up the pole position in Indian politics which Congress has enjoyed so far. If Modi's govt delivers well, BJP stands to consolidate its pole position and occupy it for a significant period of time.
This should also lay to rest all aspersions of BJP enjoying support of only 30% of the electorate. BJP is enjoying as much support, as any Cong govt post 1984. In fact, if we add the VSSC of all NDA partners as well, then NDA VSSC will be higher than even that of Rajiv Gandhi's monstrous mandate of 1984.
Let's hope Modi delivers 100% of the manifesto, so that BJP consolidates its position for the next 20 years.
