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In February 2018, Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the spanking new headquarters of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Delhi. Since then, he has travelled many times to the imposing building in Deen Dayal Upadhyay Marg to celebrate the electoral victories of the BJP. Television channels have shown visuals of myriad leaders with broad smiles waiting for him to address the jubilant crowd of BJP supporters. They did the same on February 8 as the cadre and leaders prepared for Modi to arrive to celebrate the BJP's victory in Delhi, a state it had last won in 1993. But the authors did notice something. This time, many TV cameras focused on Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, who sported her trademark smile: seemingly reluctant, enigmatic and yet interesting.
Overnight Perception Change
And why not? Even before she presented her eighth budget on February 1, the BJP had already been giving a tough fight to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). However, scores of surveys done by C Voter since the Lok Sabha election of 2024 had indicated that the middle-class voter of India had not just been in despair but also quite dissatisfied with the government at the Centre. All that disappeared literally overnight when Sitharaman announced a massive tax bonanza for India's middle class. It was akin to pulling a rabbit out of a hat. Prior to the budget speech, about 30% of respondents in the C Voter Tracker survey had said that they expected their quality of life to improve in the next year, while more than 37% expected it to deteriorate. The budget, however, had a near-magical impact on middle-class perceptions. The tracker survey results of February 2 were revealing. While 24% expected their quality of life to deteriorate in the next year, more than 40% expected it to improve. There can be no doubt that the final BJP push for victory in the last week of the Delhi campaign was powered by the middle class.
A Four-Point Gap
On the face of it, the BJP has delivered a landslide win in Delhi. From eight in 2020, the seat tally went to 48, while AAP's score crashed to 22 from 62 in 2020. But numbers can be deceptive. One major expectation of commentators was that the Congress would dent AAP big time in quite a number of seats in Delhi. The party campaigned stridently and aggressively against Arvind Kejriwal, despite the two being members of the INDIA bloc.
However, data from the Election Commission of India suggests that the Congress vote share improved marginally to a little over 6%. That's why the vote share of AAP is still formidable—almost 44%—despite such a heavy loss. In most other states in India, a 44% vote share would be enough to win a big majority. But it's also true that the BJP and its allies together managed to gather almost 48% votes. That 4 percentage point divergence proved decisive in the end and spelt electoral doom for AAP.
Resentment, But Not Absolute
The BJP's vote share jump came largely from middle-class voters, who had been in the habit of voting en bloc for the BJP in Lok Sabha elections and siding with AAP in assembly elections. That is why the BJP and AAP each won more than 50% of the vote in Lok Sabha and assembly elections, respectively. This dichotomy was broken this time.
To be sure, there was considerable anger among Delhi voters because of the dismal conditions of roads, open drainages and overflowing sewers, poor drinking water, pollution and many other civic issues. Yet, unlike the Lok Sabha elections of 2014 or even the West Bengal assembly elections of 2011, there was no tidal wave of anger and resentment as such. Do recall that most political parties would kill to get a 44% vote share in any election. AAP has done that. So, the data clearly indicates that while a section of the poorer voters did switch to the BJP, most stayed loyal to AAP.
A Classic 'Class' Election
It has been a classic “class” election. While the “disadvantaged” class stayed with AAP, the middle class and the rich switched en masse to the BJP. It would also be important to remember here that the income levels of the so-called “middle class” cannot be compared to the middle class in states like Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal or Odisha. For instance, even the lowest-skilled worker employed as, say, a domestic help in upper-middle-class families in Delhi, manages to earn a total monthly income of around Rs 12,000 at the very least. The total household income of such workers would be much more than the incomes of “poor” households in, say, Jharkhand, Bihar, West Bengal or Odisha. Thus, quite a few of these aspirational middle-class voters in Delhi did shift to the BJP this time.
Barring the Rs 3,000-6,000 family income group, most poor voters of Delhi have remained loyal to AAP. The reason for this “aberration” could be that a majority of Delhi citizens earn more than that and also get benefits like free ration and food under the Centre's schemes. In Delhi, those earning between Rs 6,000 to Rs 10,000 a month would be considered really poor. In this category, AAP has enjoyed a 10% vote share edge. Among middle-class Delhi folks earning between Rs 50,000 to Rs 1 lakh a month (there are a lot of them in Delhi in the form of Central and state government employees and salaried people in the private sector), the BJP has enjoyed a vote share edge of 22% over AAP.
BJP Can't Slow Down
That just about sums up the Delhi election. AAP has not been wiped out the way the Congress was in Delhi in 2015. It still has the support of about 44% of Delhi voters. The BJP juggernaut is likely to keep rolling to pare down this figure as well. Nonetheless, this time, Nirmala Sitharaman seems to have delivered the perfect knock-out punch.
(Yashwant Deshmukh is the Founder & Editor-in-Chief of CVoter Foundation and Sutanu Guru is Executive Director)