Which Way Will Himachal Pradesh Go?
Opinion polls are divided, ground reports are mixed and the body language of politicians hardly reveals much. As the hill state is going to vote on Nov. 12, the question everybody is asking is: Will Himachal Pradesh stick to its tradition of voting out the incumbent every five years or will the Bharatiya Janata Party’s lotus bloom again?
One way to get close to having an informed view about the outcome is to have a sense of what has happened electorally in the state since the last round of assembly elections. We have two sets of data to get a sense of what has followed.
2019 Was A Landslide For The BJP
The state witnessed a tsunami of sorts in favour of the BJP in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. With a vote share close to 70%, the BJP had managed a lead in all the assembly segments. The party’s vote share in the Lok Sabha elections was a stunning 20 percentage points more than what it had received in the 2017 assembly elections. In that sense, it was a massive pro-incumbency endorsement.
However, the electoral script changed dramatically in the bypolls for three assembly constituencies and the Mandi Lok Sabha seat in 2021. The Mandi Lok Sabha bypoll witnessed a stunning reversal of sorts. While the BJP had won the seat in 2019 with an eye-popping vote share of 68% and a victory margin of close to 4 lakh votes, the Congress wrested the seat with a victory margin of 7,000 votes in the 2021 bypolls. Such a big reversal in the space of just two years!
A note of caution here. Anyone looking for some answer to the Himachal election puzzle must approach the subject with an open mind. Excessive reliance on one set of data—the outcome of the 2017 and 2019 elections, for instance—may give the impression of a no-contest between the two principal parties in the state- the BJP and the Congress. And jumping to conclusions on the basis of 2021 bypolls may be misleading too.
Voters Change Their Representatives Frequently
If what has happened since the last assembly does present contrasting scenarios, should we look for more clues in the state’s recent electoral history? For more than three decades now, the state has been voting out the incumbent every five years. If that tradition holds, the BJP may be staring at big losses in the state.
However, we have seen in two of the recent assembly polls—the ones in Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh, for example—that states known to throw out incumbents have witnessed course correction. Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh recently turned pro-incumbent after experimenting with nearly 20 years of strong anti-incumbency?
What else should we look for to get some clarity on who is going to come out on top in the hill state—the data on swing seats and strongholds or regional variation in voting behaviour?
According to reliable estimates, a little more than half of the0 68 assembly seats in the state are considered swing seats as they switch sides every five years. Conversely, there are still nearly three dozen seats that stay loyal to the incumbent party or the candidate. The swing-strongholds data therefore don’t make us any wiser either as they too indicate that the state can go either way.
As far as regional variation across states is concerned, the Kangra region that consists mainly of plain areas is known to get dissatisfied with ruling parties rather quickly while the other two regions of Mandi and Shimla have their own sets of biases. The BJP is seen to be slightly stronger in the Mandi region and the Congress has enjoyed some advantage in the Shimla region.
All the markers discussed here suggest that the state is headed for a photo finish. While the BJP’s well-oiled election machine has the capacity to overcome insurmountable challenges, the Congress may be banking on the state’s long electoral tradition of shifting political loyalty rather quickly.
On the voting day, we will get to know whether the machine gets an upper hand or the tradition triumphs. Till then, let us enjoy the dance of democracy in all its dimensions in the picturesque Himachal Pradesh.
