General Election 2024: A Pre-Election Analysis of West Bengal Polity

It’s just a week away for the Election Commissioner of India to declare dates for the upcoming 2024 general elections, and various opinion polls are flooding through various media. Thus, it’s time for pre-poll analysis for some important states with complex polities. Most of the opinion polls suggest that the BJP led NDA is likely to sweep Hindi heartland states like UP, Rajasthan, MP, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Bihar, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and even North-East. There are some differences of opinion in other states like those of South Indian states, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Odisha, etc. So, it’s an effort to analyse those opinion polls vis-à-vis the past record, present context, etc. in these states. In this article, I have taken up the West Bengal scenario.

As of today, there are four opinion polls available, which are the latest. The seat predictions are as below:

I couldn’t get the vote share prediction in a compiled way to assess how these pollsters have reached the number of seats. One thing is for sure that three pollsters are predicting BJP to gain compared to 2019 general election. Similarly, three pollsters are predicting TMC to lose seats compared to 2019 general election. Times Now predicts a rise in TMC’s seat whereas loss for BJP’s tally.

Let’s go to vote share got by different parties during the 2019 general election. In that election, TMC got a vote share of 43.69%, an increase of 4.64% compared to its 2014 general election performance. The main point is to be noted that TMC had 34 seats in the 2014 general election with a lesser vote share (39.8%), whereas with an increased vote share it just got 22 seats. The reason is that West Bengal polity has gone almost bi-party system replacing the Left and Congress’s presence during the 2019 general election. In 2019, BJP got an astounding 40.9% vote share, an increase of 22.76% compared to its vote share in the 2014 general election, where it got around 17.02% vote share. Both TMC and BJP’s vote share increase came at the cost of Congress and the Left’s vote share. Congress lost around 4% vote share to end up with 5.67% vote share whereas the CPM lost almost 17% of the vote share to end up with just 6.33% vote share.

Now let us come to the 2021 assembly election vote share. Here, TMC got around 48.02% of the vote share, which means another increase of 4.3% vote share compared to the 2019 general election. BJP got 38.15% of the vote share, which is around 2.75% less vote share than their vote share in the 2019 general election. Congress and CPM had vote shares of 4.73% and 2.93%, respectively and drew blank in terms of seats in the assembly. Congress lost around 1% vote share and CPM lost around 3.4% vote share compared to their 2019 general election vote share. Point to be noted here that TMC’s increase of vote share in assembly election is equal to vote share lost by Congress and CPM compared to the 2019 general election.

Let us understand why pollsters see BJP’s increase in tally and TMC’s loss of seats in this upcoming general election. My reasons are as follows.

1. TMC’s minority vote banks are concentrated in some areas heavily. That’s why more vote shares by TMC don’t mean a decisive win for TMC in the entire state. Thus, if the BJP nears TMC’s vote share, then it may get more seats than TMC.
2. In the 2021 assembly election, TMC got all the anti-BJP votes from the Congress and Left Alliance. That means whatever remains with the Left and Congress is more anti-TMC than anti-BJP, and if required, they would support the BJP over the TMC. That’s why perhaps Mamata Banerjee smartly refused seat sharing with Congress and the Left in West Bengal. But as TMC is part of the I.N.D.I. Alliance, there might be some percentage votes going to the BJP. Even a 0.5% vote share transfer will make the BJP beneficial.
3. The TMC is hoping that the anti-incumbency votes will go to the left and Congress. If that happens, then TMC will benefit. Else TMC would like to lose like anything.
4. The demographic dis-advantage doesn’t allow BJP to sweep the state. Anti-BJP sentiment among many communities and groups in the Bengal polity will force even dissatisfied anti-TMC voters to rally behind the TMC.

So, in conclusion, I would say that in the upcoming general election, neither the TMC nor the BJP are likely to sweep West Bengal. There will be a tough contest among the two parties as there’s no other party present in that polity. Who will get more seats? Well, time will tell. Now it can be said that the difference in seats between two parties won’t be more than 5, and either TMC or BJP can take the lead as both may have roughly equal vote shares. A caveat though, in Indian politics, especially electoral politics, the election results in West Bengal can surprise even experienced pollsters, analysts, and experts.