Which election/elections is(are) India 2024 closest to?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

You have up to 2 votes.

[OSR stands with Israel]

I am going with either :

USA 1938: A Party nicknamed the GOP that had been left for the dead comes roaring back against an incumbent administration in their view tried to grab way more power than the voters were comfortable with (Court Packing for the Dems, Super Majority for the BJP). The BJP trying to push for a super majority did hurt them in UP as the SP made the argument that the only reason the BJP wants that is to change the constitution to remove caste reservation which greatly hurt the BJP

UK 2017: An incumbent PM who expects to win 400 seats or at the very least a landslide gets stunned as the voters reduce the government to a minority. The Tories like the BJP likely got saved by gains in non traditional areas(Scotland for the Tories and the South for the BJP)

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I am going with either :

USA 1938: A Party nicknamed the GOP that had been left for the dead comes roaring back against an incumbent administration in their view tried to grab way more power than the voters were comfortable with (Court Packing for the Dems, Super Majority for the BJP). The BJP trying to push for a super majority did hurt them in UP as the SP made the argument that the only reason the BJP wants that is to change the constitution to remove caste reservation which greatly hurt the BJP

UK 2017: An incumbent PM who expects to win 400 seats or at the very least a landslide gets stunned as the voters reduce the government to a minority. The Tories like the BJP likely got saved by gains in non traditional areas(Scotland for the Tories and the South for the BJP)

What do you think the best devil's advocate arguments for the other poll options would look like?

[Antonio the Sixth]

UK 2017 is where my mind went, especially in light of prior history (previous election was a surprising overperformance by the incumbent, the one before that a long-expected alternation). Obviously this isn't worth very much

[adma]

British Columbia 2017?

[CumbrianLefty]

Not that well remembered, but Australia 1961 is actually a pretty good one - Menzies was actually in shock at how close he had got to losing power. He duly upped his game for his final election in 1963.

[DL]

British Columbia 2017?

Not a good comparison - it was never expected to be an easy win for the incumbent BC Liberals - polling had it even the whole campaign and the fact it ended up so close came as no surprise to anyone.

A better Canadian example might be 1965 when all the polls indicated an easy Liberal majority - and in the end they fell a few seats short and were stuck with a minority again.

Another good comparison might be the 1972 Canadian federal election when everyone thought Trudeau would get another majority and instead came within two seats of losing and lost his majority 

[TheTide]

Canada 1957 is the furthest given that the incumbent government lost office.

[DL]

What about Australia 1999 when John Howard came shockingly close to being a one term PM?

[Mexican Wolf]

It definitely feels the most like the UK in 2017. Two Prime Ministers with a decent majority both sought an even stronger majority to pass their agendas. Both were aiming for and were confident that they would win a similar number of seats: around 400. Both were polling strongly for a large part of the campaign and their main oppositions were expected to do poorly, but their opposition outperformed expectations. Both governments ended up losing their single-party majorities and had to rely on alliances with other parties to stay in power.

[morgieb]

What about Australia 1999 when John Howard came shockingly close to being a one term PM?

Nah, most people expected 98 to be close. What happened there was that the first Howard Government was pretty unpopular and also had a right-wing minor party show strength. I don’t think it’s really comparable to an otherwise popular government underperforming because of overreach fears.