Analysis: BJP's Massive Gujarat Gains And What To Make Of It

The first wisps of winter hung in the heavy evening air as Narendra Modi addressed party workers at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) head office in Delhi.

“Bhupendra has beaten Narendra’s record!” he declaimed to the roars of jubilant hundreds who had come to celebrate their party’s record victory in the Gujarat assembly elections.

And what a victory it was — 156 seats out of 182, with a 53 per cent vote share! Never before in the history of Gujarat had a political party won so many seats in an election.

It was the response of responses from an incensed electorate, who decided to firmly reject the regressive politics of caste and welfarism the only way they could — at the polling booth.

It was also a triumphant repudiation of any spiel which deviated from the path of tangible prosperity.

For these reasons and more, the BJP’s gains in Gujarat deserve a detailed analysis if we are to fully appreciate the depth and magnitude of their sweep.

This is the 2022 results map:

This is the 2022 results table, also showing how the performance of various parties changed from 2017:

This table gives party victories by region and reserved seats (for tribals and scheduled castes):

This table shows the net seat swings from 2017 to 2022:

This table shows the gains from 2017 to 2022:

And this is the seat shift map showing gains and holds in 2022 over 2017:

Observations

• The BJP gained 65 seats with a remarkable 3.4 per cent increase in vote share.

• For the first time, they swept the tribal belt, winning 23 of 27 such reserved seats. This is their strongest showing ever.

• They also registered their best performance in the seats reserved for scheduled castes, winning 11 of 13.

• Their biggest gains came from Saurashtra and Kutch, where they gained 26 seats (a net of 23).

• However, like before, the party once again stuttered in western Saurashtra (the coastal belt running from Dwaraka to Somnath). This is where the Congress managed a rare gain in the face of a phenomenal sweep (Arjun Modhvadia won Porbandar), held two seats, and where the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) made two gains from the Congress.

• Similarly, the BJP was also unable to fully overcome the local dynamics in the upper tracts of north Gujarat, close to the Rajasthan border. This allowed the Congress to retain five seats in the region (including two closely contested tribal seats) and to make three gains.

• But really, these hardly amount to a dozen seats and pale in the face of the party’s overall performance, especially in the Congress gains and holds of 2017. The statistics are overwhelming: the BJP plucked 33 of the 42 holds the Congress had in 2017 and reversed 30 of the Congress’ 33 gains in 2017.

• In effect, Rahul Gandhi’s three-pronged caste card of 2017 and Arvind Kejriwal’s OTP formula of 2022 (OBCs, tribals, and Patidars) were both comprehensively rejected.

• Here, readers may bear in mind that the BJP’s reversal of the Congress’ 2017 gains was facilitated by AAP’s splitting of votes in only some seats. The rest were all solid vote swings from the Congress to the BJP.

• Even more remarkable was the manner in which the BJP gained in central Gujarat. Not only did they win 55 of 61 seats in this region, with 19 gains, but they also got record vote shares in the cities.

• Again, the numbers are surreal. In Ahmedabad, the BJP polled 83 per cent in Ghatlodia, 80 per cent in Ellis Bridge, 77 per cent in Naranpura and Sabarmati, 73 per cent in Maninagar, and 71 per cent in Naroda — all middle-class redoubts.

• In Vadodara city seat, the BJP candidate polled 71 per cent, and 68 per cent in adjoining Sayajigunj constituency.

• It was the same in Surat, where the BJP polled 76 per cent in Surat West.

• And for good effect, the BJP also won the Muslim-dominant seat of Dariyapur in old city Ahmedabad. Some of our usual suspects were thus reduced to fretting dejectedly on Twitter that “even” Muslims had voted for the BJP, as if that’s a bad thing.

Inferences

The scale of the BJP’s victory is so large that it is difficult to put the verdict in any one unitary perspective.

At one level, it was a clean party win. At another, it was the grassroots system that kept the flock together and got the voter to the ballot box even in the face of a surprisingly low turnout. 

It also represented a successful shift in generations for the BJP, with most of their old guard retiring from the field this time. That list included stalwarts like Nitin Patel and Saurabh Patel.

The results also show that while community divides may persist, they do so in a fairly civilised manner, with each keeping to their own and their community pride. But come election time, they could rise above caste, in style, not least because they know which side of their bread is buttered.

There are no illusions among the hard-nosed voters of Gujarat; they have become fabulously prosperous in the past three decades under the BJP’s governance, and they want more.

While Narendra Modi may have been gracious enough to credit Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel for the victory, there is no doubt that the Prime Minister was the star campaigner.

A month ago, this writer said that the campaign would start sizzling when Modi spoke in his mother tongue. That is exactly what happened.

Ten days before electioneering ended, Modi began a series of rallies where he spoke to the voters in their idiom, about their regions, and their future prospects if the BJP were to get a renewed mandate.

The best example is Amreli region of western Saurashtra, a traditional Congress keep.

Modi’s speech at Amreli was something else, and it showed in the results — the BJP won all the seats there.

Local Congress strongman Paresh Dhanani, who won Amreli convincingly in 2002, 2012, and 2017 (he lost by a small margin in 2007), was forced to suffer the ignominy of securing just 26 per cent of the popular vote in 2022.

What a comedown, and he couldn’t even blame the AAP for his humiliating defeat because the BJP candidate won with 55 per cent (up by 10 per cent from 2017)!

In conclusion, the 2022 Gujarat assembly election results show that anti-incumbency can be kept resolutely at bay, even in the face of flagrant, aggressive, persistent identity politics, as long as a government delivers.

That is all that the voter wants and that is all that counts.