India 2022 assembly elections Feb/Mar and Nov/Dec

[jaichind]

With UP phase 5 coming up which includes Rahul Gandhi's old seat of Amethi, it seems Rahul Gandhi roped in Bill Gates to de facto campaign with him.  It was more an event for a Bill Gates-funded self-help group but the timing and him going with Rahul Gandhi makes it clear that Bill Gates is de facto being used as a campaign prop for INC.  Of course, I doubt Bill Gates will bring in any votes in UP.

[jaichind]

UP Phase 5 (voting in a couple of days) results in the last few elections

2019 BJP 47 SP 4 BSP 7 INC 1 OTH 2
2017 BJP 50 SP 5 BSP 3 INC 1 OTH 2
2014 BJP 50 SP 5 INC 6
2012 BJP 5 SP 41 BSP 7 INC 6 OTH 2

[jaichind]

https://www.news18.com/news/politics/punjab-elections-2022-congresss-internal-assessment-hints-at-poor-outcome-4809557.html

"Punjab Elections 2022: Congress's Internal Assessment Hints at Poor Outcome"

INC internal post-election assessment of Punjab indicates that it has done poorly and will most likely get around 40 seats.  That should mean an AAP plurality but most likely not an AAP majority.  The assessment is mostly based on turnout patterns.

[jaichind]

Current betting markets

Punjab

AAP 64-66
INC 24-26
SAD 17-19

UP

BJP 223-226
SP  131-134
BSP  10-12

[jaichind]

India Today UP Phase 5 analysis

[jaichind]

Manipur INC is openly talking about a post-poll alliance with NPP and/or NPF as voting in phase I of Manipur winds down.  I guess they concluded that there is no way INC will get to a majority.

[jaichind]

WB municipalities elections in progress

2276 Wards across 108 Municipalities

AITC: contest 2254 wards; Supporting GJM in 22 Wards
BJP: contest 2026 wards
Left Front: contest 1865 wards; Supporting INC in 56 Wards
INC: const 962 wards; Supporting Left Front in 226 Wards

AITC wins 103 wards uncontested

AITC will sweep.  It will be interesting to see if BJP or Left Front end up with a higher vote share.

[jaichind]

Odisha Panchayat Elections:  Counting mostly done.

Out of 851 seats, it is

BJD   764
BJP     42
INC     38
OTH      7

Massive BJD sweep.  Big dropoff for BJP relative to last time.  INC was looking to make a comeback which did not take place.  There seems to be a large bloc of BJD/BJP swing voters that vote BJP in national elections but BJD in local elections with INC reduced to a vote share in the 15%-20% region and no prospect of making gains.

[jaichind]

Odisha Panchayat Elections:  Counting mostly done.

Out of 851 seats, it is

BJD   764
BJP     42
INC     38
OTH      7

Massive BJD sweep.  Big dropoff for BJP relative to last time.  INC was looking to make a comeback which did not take place.  There seems to be a large bloc of BJD/BJP swing voters that vote BJP in national elections but BJD in local elections with INC reduced to a vote share in the 15%-20% region and no prospect of making gains.

The change from 2017 is

BJD    +290
BJP     -260
INC      -20
Others  -10

Strong swing from BJP to BJD

[jaichind]

WB Municipal poll results.  Counting mostly done

AITC        1870
BJP             63
INC             59
Left Front    56
Others       119

INC votes are the most concentrated and the Left Front votes are most dispursed.  So these seat shares seem to indicate AITC vote share is around 60%-65%, Left Front around the same as BJP perhaps a bit ahead, and INC vote share lower than Left Front and BJP.

[jaichind]

WB  Municipal poll vote share (mostly matched my guess based on seat count)

AITC           63.4%
Left Front    14.1%
BJP             12.6%
INC              4.8%

[jaichind]

Distribution of Indian students in the world given recent events in Ukraine requiring evacuation of Indian students there.  Suprised how high PRC, Saudi Arabia, and the Philippines are. 

[jaichind]

Priyanka Gandhi got 20 million social media views of her offering prayers at Sihari Shiva Temple in Lucknow.  6 million of it are on FB.  Most likely this will not translate into votes but clearly, if she is willing to invest in UP she can be a leader of consequence in UP in the long run given her name recognition.

[jaichind]

Due to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, all the media oxygen has been taken out of the UP elections.  There was dramatically less media coverage of rallies starting last week.  The argument for this hurting BJP is that the BJP strategy was based on holding rallies stage by stage to build momentum and this breaks it.  The argument for this hurting SP is that it "seems" SP did reasonably well the first few phases and they were counting on UP elections being in the news in Eastern UP for that trend to flow into the last phases to overcome the structural weakness of SP there.

[jaichind]

Voting in UP phase 6 is in progress

Results from the last few election cycles for this phase is

2019 BJP 45 BSP 12
2017 BJP 47 SP 3 BSP 5 INC 1 OTH 1
2014 BJP 53 SP 2 BSP 1 INC 1
2012 BJP 8 SP 32 BSP 9 INC 5 OTH 3

[jaichind]

Where I see the races now

Ranked Chances of the ruling party staying the largest party

BJP in Manipur
BJP in UP
-------------- 50/50-----------------
BJP in Uttarakhand
BJP in Goa
INC in Punjab


Ranked chances of the ruling party winning a majority

BJP in UP
--------------50/50------------------
BJP in Uttarakhand
BJP in Manipur
INC in Punjab
BJP in Goa

Uttarakhand is very bipolar which means the largest party most likely will win a majority.  Manipur and especially Goa will be very splinterd where the largest party is unlikely to win a majority

[jaichind]

WB AITC CM Mamata Banerjee campaigned in Varanasi, which will vote in the 7th and last UP phase, with former SP CM Akhilesh Yadav.  Varanasi is one of the holy cities of Hinduism and is Modi's seat.  There are a significant number of Bengali in Varanasi so this campaign rally is not just for show.  Of course, this will be followed by WB BJP leader Suvendu Adihikari  (who used to be in AITC but since defected to BJP and defeated Mamata Banerjee in his home district Nandigram in the 2021 WB assembly elections) who will do a rally with BJP leaders in Varanasi.

[jaichind]

Looks like there were a lot of rigging in the first phase of the Manipur election.  ECI has reordered repolling in a bunch of boothes

[jaichind]

In Naga heavy Manipur Tadubi assembly seat that is to vote in 2 days the BJP candidate withdraws.  In 2017 this seat was NPP vs BJP vs NPF with INC nowhere and NPP winning.  The 2017 BJP candidate that came in second has defected to NPF and is running this time against the NPP incumbent as the NPF candidate.  This time the INC is not even bothered to run a candidate and BJP came up with an unknown as its candidate.  It seems the race is becoming an NPP vs NPF battle as the BJP candidate also withdraws.  His name will be ballot but in de facto terms the BJP is out.

BTW, the 2017 BJP candidate that has defected to NPF was the 2012 INC winner of this district defeating the NPF in 2012 but defected to BJP for the 2017 election only to lose his seat to NPP.  This time around he is trying to come back on the NPF ticket.

[jaichind]

https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/salam-joy-singh-congress-suspends-manipur-candidate-hours-before-vote-for-backing-bjp-2793475

Another last-minute Manipur defection is in Wangoi where the INC candidate was suspended by INC for de campaigning for the BJP candidate. The INC candidate, Salam Joy Singh, ran in 2012 as the NCP candidate and was defeated by the AITC candidate Oinam Lukhoi Singh.  In 2017 Oinam Lukhoi Singh defected to INC and defeated Salam Joy Singh again who in 2017 had defected to and ran as BJP.  For the 2022 election, the INC incumbent Oinam Lukhoi Singh defected to BJP and ran as BJP while Salam Joy Singh defected to INC and ran as INC in a swap of the 2017 configuration.  NPP which did well here in 2017 is running the same candidate and seems to be doing well.  It seems Salam Joy Singh sensed that he was not going to win as the INC candidate and decided to de facto switch back to the BJP to try to become the kingmaker for the INC-turned-BJP incumbant.

[jaichind]

UP INC leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra (now called PGV) rallies in UP seem to be getting bigger and bigger.   INC will bomb this election mostly due to BJP-SP polarization but as mentioned before the brand is growing in UP can be a force a couple of election cycles from now.

With INC likely to win around 5-8 seats this time with a best case of breaking into double digits one can ponder which the best-case scenario for INC.  It seems to me what is ideal for INC is for a hung assembly and BJP forms a government with BSP support.  This will turn off anti-BJP non-Jatav Dalit voters from BSP as well as turn off old pro-INC Brahmins from BJP.  These votes could transfer to INC next election under this scenario if INC is viewed as viable.  Unfortunately for INC even in this ideal scenario, INC will not be viewed as viable unless some of the Muslim votes come back to INC from SP.  For that to take place BJP will have to lose enough of its non-Yadav OBC votes to SP for the threat of a BJP landslide to recede.  So it seems what INC really needs is for the BJP brand to weaken the next couple of election cycles with non-Yadav OBCs.   That will be hard to do while Modi is at the helm of BJP.  Given that INC should really plan on cashing in on PGV's growing brand a couple of election cycles from now hoping all the trends I claim could take place does take place.

[jaichind]

Mostly uncorroborated on the ground reports from UP seems to indicate

a) BJP attempts are religious polarization are mostly not working. Caste seems to trump religion this time around
b) Clearly BJP SP polarisation.  Meaning there are cases of BJP voters voting tactically for BSP in some places to defeat SP.  Also when SP runs Brahmin or other Upper Caste candidates they do seem to get Upper Caste votes but when INC or BSP does the same it does not work since they are not viewed as viable.
c) Non-Yadav OBC continues to be the kingmakers and there seem to be conflicting reports on the extent they are shifting from BJP to SP.
d) Jatav Dalits are still loyal to BSP but non-Jatav Dalits are shifting away.  This could be very good news for BJP if they migrate to BJP but in some cases, they could be going to INC due to the PGV ( Priyanka Gandhi Vadra) factor which could mitigate BJP gains.
e) Upper Caste seems pretty solid for BJP except for when SP runs an Upper Caste candidate so the Brahmin-Thakor conflict taking down BJP narrative is mostly not true.

All this seems to project a meltdown for BSP and INC and a narrow BJP victory over SP.

[jaichind]

https://www.thequint.com/voices/opinion/up-elections-why-phases-6-7-will-be-the-most-decisive-rounds#read-more

Amitabh Tiwari, aka politicalbaaba, which is sort of an Indian version of RCP has some data on caste composition of the BJP SP and BSP vote in UP as well as the caste composition of its candidates on his article for The Quint.




SP's ticket distribution seems to mirror UP caste/community composition.  SP gets very few Upper Caste votes historically but this time is making a big push to get Upper Caste votes by having a large number of Upper Caste candidates.  SP has fewer Mulsim candidates than before counting on anti-BJP Muslim consolidation on its own.  SP does have a higher number of Yadav candidates but does have a large number of non-Yadav OBC candidates.

BJP has zero Muslim candidates and most of that extra allocation goes to Upper Caste candidates.  BJP also underweights OBCs but that is mostly because of very few BJP Yadav candidates.  BJP is mostly giving up on the Yadav-Muslim vote (30% of the population as a whole) and working to consolidate the rest.

BSP has some but not a lot of Dalit candidates even though most of the BSP vote comes from Dalits.  Just like SP with Muslims BSP is betting on its core Jatav Dalit base to vote BSP and then use ticket distribution to claw the votes of various castes groups.  This time around BSP seems to be targeting Muslims a bit less than in the past and targeting Upper Caste more than in 2017.  As I have written before, the BSP strategy has to be to sell tickets to various local second-tier kingpins to fund its party and the personal (often caste) vote of these kingpins could be added to the BSP Jatav base to sometimes produce a victory.  This model is breaking down as the non-Jatav Dalits are drifting to BJP but is still the BSP model this election.

[jaichind]

Michael Lobo of INC (on the left of the picture he just tweeted below with the AICC head of Goa to discuss post result strategy for INC in Goa) might be one of the surprise winners of this round of Goa elections.



Michael Lobo has been associated with the Goa BJP for a while and was pretty much the BJP Catholic face in Goa and was a 2 term BJP MLA in Goa.  For the 2022 Goa assembly election, he made a bet to defect to INC.  It seems he observed that the reason why INC missed out on forming the government in 2017 despite beating BJP 17-13 in terms of MLA election was because

a) INC had too many faction leaders who were at each other's throats so INC could not come up with a single CM face post-election
b) BJP brought back former BJP CM Manohar Parrikar from the center to rope in other MLAs to support a BJP government.

This time around most of the INC faction leaders had defected to BJP while Manohar Parrikar had since passed away.  So Michael Lobo figured that there is a reasonable chance that BJP will lose the assembly elections due to anti-incumbency and Manohar Parrikar not leading the BJP campaign (just like in 2017).  But now with all the INC faction leaders gone there is a clear field for him to become the INC CM candidate post-election if INC beats the BJP in terms of MLA.  So he made the bet to defect to INC and run as INC.  The 2017 INC candidate he faced defected to BJP in response and ran as the BJP candidate.  

Michael Lobo seems certain to win his seat and going by his maneuvers with the AICC head of Goa seems poised to be a top contender for CM in case INC beats BJP and comes close to a majority in Goa.  Had Michael Lobo stayed in BJP it is doubtful he would be a top contender for the CM seat especially when there is an incumbent BJP CM Pramod Sawant.

[jaichind]

Voting is in progress in the Naga and other mostly tribal seats in Manipur.  NPF and INC are accusing the BJP of booth capturing in the Naga areas.