Post Arrest of Kejriwal: Who Will Benefit in Delhi in the 2024 General Election?

After Arvind Kejriwal’s arrest by the Enforcement Department, there’s visible political cacophony, at least in the media, that attracts public attention. Many, at least on social media, claim that this arrest may be a blunder by the Narendra Modi-led NDA, which might be counterproductive for the BJP in the upcoming general election. Many also opine that the arrest was inevitable, especially the way Kejriwal avoided summons after summons; thus, arrest has no impact.

But the main question is whether this arrest has any impact on the outcome of the upcoming election results in Delhi and in the rest of the country. This article is an analysis of the possible impact on the election result of the Delhi 2024 Parliament election.

This time there’s an alliance between AAP and INC (the Indian National Congress) in the state of Delhi. Let’s first understand the impact of the alliance before and then after the arrest. 

Impact of the AAP and Congress Alliance before the arrest of Arvind Kejriwal.

To understand the impact of the alliance, we have to understand the political space division between parties before and after AAP. Let us first deal with Assembly Vote shares since the 2008 assembly election. Below is the vote share secured by the parties’ compiled from the election results.

From the above table, it’s visible that while the BJP almost maintained its vote share of 32–38% since the 2008 assembly elections, INC had lost its vote share from 40% to 4%, whereas AAP gained 29.49% in 2013 and went up to 54% in 2015 and 2020. That means AAP has taken mostly the vote shares of Congress and other non-BJP parties like BSP, etc. This proves that AAP’s success is at the cost of Congress as well as non-BJP parties. In fact, the BJP too gained around 5% of the vote share of Congress in the 2020 assembly election.

Now let us see the vote share secured by parties in parliamentary elections. The following table is the vote share secured by parties, compiled by me from the election results.

From 2009 to 2014, Congress lost around 42% of the vote share, out of which around 33% was taken by the AAP, the then new entity with a lot of popularity from the Anna Hazare led anti-corruption movement, and around 9% by the BJP because of Narendra Modi’s charisma. However, during the 2019 general election, AAP lost around 15% of its vote share, out of which Congress took back 7%, whereas the BJP took 8%. Here is one more point to be noted: in comparison to the 2013 assembly election and the 2014 Lok Sabha election, Congress lost around 14.45% of the vote share, out of which around 2% went to the AAP and the rest went to the BJP. That means that in 2014 itself, voters in Delhi decided that they needed AAP instead of Congress in the Assembly election but BJP in the Parliament election. This was further illustrated in the 2015 assembly election, where the AAP got a 54% vote share while the Congress & BJP got 9.7% and 32.2% vote shares, respectively.

From the above data, it’s clear that AAP’s entire performance is at the cost of Congress. There’s a sizable voter (more than 20%) who votes differently in the assembly election and the parliamentary election.  

Now there’s an alliance between the AAP and Congress. Does that change anything? Frankly, no, because the BJP’s core vote share is independent of Congress and the AAP’s core vote share. Also, the 20% mobile vote share that votes AAP in the assembly election and BJP in the Parliament election belongs to no core voters of any party. Thus, the alliance of Congress and AAP has no significance in Delhi politics but is rather beneficial to the BJP. Because when the same core voters are divided between two parties, there remains a small vote share that is radically against each other. That means some voters of AAP are more anti-Congress than anti-BJP, and some voters of Congress are more anti-AAP than anti-BJP. In such cases, these voters either opt for NOTA or another party (the BJP). The INDIA-TODAY-C-Voter opinion poll from March 2024, which gave the BJP a 57% vote share compared to the INDI Alliance’s 36% vote share, is evidence of this. According to this opinion poll, although the BJP maintains its 2019 vote share, the INDI alliance loses more than 4% of the vote share compared to their combined vote share in 2019, which was 40.6%.

What would be the impact after Arvind Kejriwal’s arrest?

To analyze this, I have taken data from “India-Today-C-Voter” Political Stock Exchange data for Delhi only (and not the rest of the country data). This show can be viewed by clicking the link Political Stock Exchange With Rahul Kanwal LIVE: Has Arvind Kejriwal’s ‘Honest’ Image Taken A Hit? (youtube.com) . My compilation is based on questionaries, and the format is a bit different from the format provided by ‘India Today-C-Voter’ although the data is the same. You can consider it as summarized data.

Here interesting data is that 17.1% voters of INDI Alliance see Kejriwal’s arrest is due to corruption, whereas 14.3% of BJP’s voters see Modi is vindictive in arresting Kejriwal. More interestingly, more than 50% INDI Alliance voters think Arvind Kejriwal’s honest image is damaged, whereas 25% BJP’s voters don’t see that way. Only 30% of INDI Alliance voters think that the arrest is because Kejriwal is a threat to Modi, whereas 6.5% of BJP’s voters also think the same reason for Kejriwal’s arrest. 25% of BJP’s voters think Narendra Modi is using central agencies against opposition leaders, whereas 15% Of INDI Alliance voters don’t see that way. Whether Arvind Kejriwal will get sympathy from this arrest? Only 43.3% of INDI Alliance voters think so, whereas 21.9% of BJP’s voters also think so. On the other hand, only 55.1% of BJP voters think BJP will get support for this arrest, whereas 39.1% voters of INDI Alliance also think that Narendra Modi will benefit. Isn’t it a very interesting data, thanks to Yashwant Deshmukh, the premier pollster of India?

Question is what does this data say about the possible impact on the upcoming poll? But before that, let’s understand the difference between the vote shares of INDI Alliance and BJP. In 2019 general election, the difference of vote share was 16.3%. As per the opinion poll of India-Today-C-Voter just before the arrest, the vote share difference was 21%. As the margin of error is 5%, let’s consider taht the opinion poll vote share difference is still 16% (favoring INDI Alliance in margin of error). That means INDI Alliance needs a lot of swing in their favor. According to PSE by India-Today-C-Voter, if INDI Alliance gets 1/3^rd swing, then they may get 2 seats compared to BJP’s 5 seats. If they get one-half swing voters, then INDI Alliance can get 5 seats compared to BJP getting 2 seats. Similarly, Indi-Alliance can get all 7 seats if they get 2/3^rd Swing voters.

Do the above data say whether there will be any possible swing in favor of AAP and Congress alliance? Frankly, I don’t see that because a sizable vote base of INDI Alliance doesn’t think the arrest will benefit Kejriwal’s interests. Will this arrest benefit the BJP? This is also unlikely because sizable BJP’s voters are not convinced with the arrest. Thus, there could be a stalemate of vote share and the advantage is to BJP.

What Next?

Arvind Kejriwal is refusing to resign and is ready to govern from jail if he doesn’t get bail. INDI Alliance is ready to play the victim card and there’s close to two months’ time as Delhi election is scheduled to be held on May 25^th. Will they succeed in getting required swing?

Well, I don’t have data on this. However, there’s a theory. Politics is a game of perception. AAP is much better at creating narrative than Congress and that’s why it took down Congress in Delhi and Punjab. But then BJP is not behind to any in creating narrative and propagating perceptions. When Narendra Modi arrives in Delhi political field in campaign mode, he will push the narrative of corruption, especially in the back of AAP’s rise through anti-corruption movement. Modi is a great orator and knows how to create perception. So, I think both narratives will cancel out and thus a stalemate will prevail, which is advantage to BJP.

The only caveat here is that nothing is impossible in Indian politics, especially in electoral politics.