How many seats will BJP win in 2019?

April 27, 2019

There is enough evidence now that NDA is looking comfortable to return to power in 2019. It looks like BJP alone will win around 220 seats in 2019. Here are 5 recent triggers for this update

Key updates from the Election

Journalists: Over the last 3 days, journalists supporting the Congress seem to have gone out of the limb criticising the party for not running the 2019 election properly. Journalists are extremely well networked and for them to criticise the Congress suggests the Congress party is in trouble

Opinion Polls: The last set of opinion polls had ranged between 275 and 310 and rising. Our own prediction data was ranging between 253 and 300. While opinion polls have been wrong and so has been our own predictions but essentially the crux of the non-NDA supporter theory is this is 2004 kind of miss and in reality BJP will do poorly. There are several problems with the 2004 theory – Average growth has been better (Constant), Urban voters are far more in favour of BJP (2014+Aeon-CrowdWisdom Urban Survey), Voter Turnouts haven’t fallen dramatically across all States and most importantly that the massive social programs like Swacch Bharat, Jan Dhan, LPG and electricity for all will compensate for some of the rural vote share losses.

Google Trends: Google Trends are showing 3 major trends.

BJP is getting a signifiant bounce on voting day, suggests better mobilisation
While BJP is showing losses versus 2014, the losses are quite small.
Even when compared to the recent 2018 elections, BJP is showing steadiness or some improvement

Bengal and Odisha: By all signs it is clear that BJP will do well in Odisha and Bengal. At the minimum, they will gain 15 seats and the max could even be 30 seats.

Opposition Money issues: There is more than enough information available from the ground that the Opposition is struggling to fund the election. The repeated tax raids are not helping

So how many seats will BJP win in 2019?

It is ALSO true that NDA will lose seats across all states it swept in 2014 – Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, MP, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Jharkhand, Bihar. The CrowdWisdom prediction data suggests that the losses could be as high as 80 in these places. It may even lose 10 seats from other smaller states. That is a 90 Seat loss. The new alliance partner AIADMK too is likely to lose some 30 seats (liberally speaking) . Add a small gain of 25 seats from Bengal, Odisha and North East and the net loss comes to 95 seats.

2014 tally for New NDA alliance including JD(U) and AIADMK = 356 seats

Net Loss = 95 seats

Revised Prediction = 261 Seats

The point is even with a liberal 95 seat loss, BJP will end closer to 260.

Read our last analysis on this topic

In our prediction market, the most bought prediction is BJP between 211 and 225 seats.