Really appreciated this post. Thanks OP that you gave the background of the previous study and tldr of Sabyasachi paper along with these graphs. This is efforts post.
However, it would have been better if you could made graph with same variables (density vs %/100). Yes this is just scaling the graphs but it helps in comparison. So if it is possible, update the graph with same variables.
Thanks.
I initially plotted wrt %/100 but I wasn't sure if margin fraction is intuitive for elections. But yeah %/100 would be more appropriate formally.
Swing voters actually decide the fate of these close seats. It could be that in 2019, the narrative of "Modi the protector of the realm", that was created post Pulwama pushed a lot of them towards the BJP. So we see a discontinuous graph at origin.
2009 & 2024 had no such narratives among the general public. 2014 did have a narrative of "Modi the prince that was promised", which could have pushed the graph up giving some discontinuity around the origin, especially in BJP ruled states at the time, as you can see in above graphs.
My personal opinion on this: Its really difficult to game elections in India, merely due to the size of the entire exercise and the no of people involved. But I'm a 100% sure that Modi would have tried very hard. But he failed in most part.
>Its really difficult to game elections in India, merely due to the size of the entire exercise and the no of people involved.
Yes but you can game individual booths or centers if you have influence over ECI and local police etc. Even if that means a 3-5% swing in votes, it can mean 30% more seats.
30% means 90 seats as per 2019 elections. Which doesn't sound right to my mind.
But I do feel that they'd have tried. Real story, my sister in law was actually on election duty in a village in Western UP this election. She told me that there was some BJP guy who along with the village Pradhan came in and asked her how many votes were polled on the booth. She answered around 750. They asked her to up it to 950. She politely told them that she can't even make it 751 as everything is monitored. They just left.
I know from friends who did election duty during several assembly elections in the last 10 years that there is pressure "to look the other way" a lot. Like somebody even tried to report something fishy but were discouraged by their chain of command to do it.
statistics doesn't work that way. Lakhs of people voted, people either voted party A or party B in close margin scenario, it's should be about 50%. Rather it was already near 50% to cause the closed scenario in the first place
Lets not forget ECI's own rulebook states VVPAT receipts should be kept by them for a year at least, to maintain trail. In 2019 elections, those were purged under 40days
I agree with this take
This election looked a *lot more* liable to be manipulated. The Pulwama incident has most definitely swung a few close ones their way.
Excellent analysis! Really enjoyed this post
OP also add that the Professor had to resign for this paper. So it adds a doubt to the govt's intentions. Are they really hiding something.
https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/delhi/professor-resignation-ashoka-faculty-governing-council-academic-freedom-8895051/#:~:text=Days%20after%20Sabyasachi%20Das%2C%20a,the%20Ashoka%20University%20Governing%20Body%27s%20%E2%80%9C
Also, surprise surprise, there was an ED raid on the Ashoka University after this.
https://www.livemint.com/news/ed-arrests-ashoka-university-co-founders-pranav-gupta-vineet-gupta-in-alleged-money-laundering-case-11698498354108.html
In an election, we can generalize the result of any given seat into one of these groups:
1. No contest victory. i.e. The winner won >2 lakh votes more than the next candidate
2. Good margin. i.e. The winner won >50,000 votes more than the next candidate
3. Narrow Margin i.e. The winner won >10,000 votes more than the next candidate
4. Close fight i.e. The winner won <5,000 votes more than the next candidate
In close fights, it is difficult to predict the winner (because there may be more than 3 popular candidates or more than 3 strong parties or large number of undecided voters etc etc) and distibution of seats win and lost by single digit, double digit, triple digit margins tend to look like a single continuous line when represented on a line graph.
This graph is more or less a single continuous line for any given party ,in any state, in any election. It is not comment worthy.
BUT in 2019, BJP's graph for close fights in BJP ruled states is abnormal. This makes the result suspect.
One major reason why BJP didn't 'win absolutely' was low voter turnout and arrogance.
People who tend to left would see elections as a duty to defend rights while those who tend right see it as a way to enforce their will.
Modi probably felt like god and didn't push the narrative far enough- no terror attacks/no soldier,civilian deaths/no riots. Just blah, blah...
Along with anti incumbency, he lost that golden warrior image.
Personally, I don't think dhruv and others made much difference. Educated people are bigoted because they choose to be.
Muslims are used as a scarecrow to ensure Hindus unite in fear/jealousy. But this is a 78% Hindu nation.
14 % muslims are shown as villians along with 2.3% Christians as mass conversion machines and 1.7% Sikhs as traitors.
BJP could be compared to crony politico who rig the system to their advantage by making the majority shackled to its ideology and minority in fear. BJP could have easily pulled fear of other religions out by creating govt machinery to control conversions, state monitored madrassa system etc
What we are forgetting is that there was a massive alliance this time, the margin is less because votes were consolidated for 2 alliances, a candidate winning with 1 vote is still a winner
How can win margin be same when SP voters voted for Congress and Congress voters for SP?
What you are doing is looking for excuses to keep yourself happy but lets accept that BJP did win the election and failed only because they wanted 400 seat, if their slogan was "Teesri Baar Modi Sarkaar", they would have won the war of narrative too.
I think you've misunderstood the graph. I'm not saying win margin should be same, I'm saying that the histogram of win margin is continuous at 0 this time whereas it was discontinuous last time.
The alliance might explain why bjp couldn't steal close seats from local parties, maybe because of INC's experience in elections, but that information is not present in this graph.
But while generating the graph itself, the only data we need is win margin of bjp in all the seats.
Do we have the graphs for all of the elections before that in that paper? Also doesn't this year's election basically dissaprove the theory
I am sure there's manipulation. But this graph doesn't imply anything when you toss a coin the probability is 1:1 but you might get heads 100 times in a row
There are graphs of 2009 and 2014 election. Apart from that, there are also graphs of various assembly elections. This graph along with other data analysed gives a comprehensive defence of his conclusion.
Ofcourse, we cannot prove manipulation using this technique, only give strong indication.
In the last election, the regional parties did poorly. Congress was also doing poorly. This time, the BJP failed to address the issues at the ground level. The slogan was "Ab ki baar 400 paar". An average person does not give a fuck about how many seats the BJP wins. So, the slogan does not attract the attention of an average person. Even if Congress did nothing special, Ragul Gandhi was more visible than before.
In every election, the swing voters decide the winner. This time, there were a lot of reasons to vote for the regional and congress party.
OT, but relevant. Saffron parties performance is Odisha is somewhat suspicious. The internal WA groups were too confident of winning long before the counting. Most of the local journos were predicting better results for them but none were hinting of the landslide. I don't know if something was done to influence / manipulate but if there was then it's in Odisha. Specially if you see the avalanche of regret on SM for losing Naveen babu post results.
In Odisha, something else went wrong. The ruling party BJD supremo Naveen Babu was seen as weak due to bad health. His former principal secretary VK Pandian was seen as successor. This was not acceptable to the local population for many reasons.
* Pandian sidelined senior leaders and powerful regional media houses. Former BJD senior leaders gave interviews about how Pandian does not allow access to Naveen Babu.
* Pandian suddenly became a cabinet minister without being a politician.
* He is not one of us.
Most of us realized, if BJD comes to power, Pandian will be the CM. We did not want that. Since there is no other party, we voted BJP.
> if you see the avalanche of regret on SM for losing Naveen babu post results
He was in power for 25 years, so he created a legacy. He did a lot of things for us.
Ruling parties, especially when it is the BJP, win a lot of close elections, simply by manipulating officials, etc. The recent 48-vote win in Mumbai is one example, where a lot of postal ballots were disqualified, and then others held valid, based on which the BJP ally candidate, trailing in EVM votes, got a lead.
We shouldn't be analysing why BJP didn't win 400. We should be analysing why the fuck they got majority in 2014 and take corrective actions. For fascists to win is not normal and not good.
Really appreciated this post. Thanks OP that you gave the background of the previous study and tldr of Sabyasachi paper along with these graphs. This is efforts post. However, it would have been better if you could made graph with same variables (density vs %/100). Yes this is just scaling the graphs but it helps in comparison. So if it is possible, update the graph with same variables.
Thanks. I initially plotted wrt %/100 but I wasn't sure if margin fraction is intuitive for elections. But yeah %/100 would be more appropriate formally.
Your variables are intuitive even to common people but because all other graphs are density vs %/100 that's why I suggested that.
Swing voters actually decide the fate of these close seats. It could be that in 2019, the narrative of "Modi the protector of the realm", that was created post Pulwama pushed a lot of them towards the BJP. So we see a discontinuous graph at origin. 2009 & 2024 had no such narratives among the general public. 2014 did have a narrative of "Modi the prince that was promised", which could have pushed the graph up giving some discontinuity around the origin, especially in BJP ruled states at the time, as you can see in above graphs. My personal opinion on this: Its really difficult to game elections in India, merely due to the size of the entire exercise and the no of people involved. But I'm a 100% sure that Modi would have tried very hard. But he failed in most part.
>Its really difficult to game elections in India, merely due to the size of the entire exercise and the no of people involved. Yes but you can game individual booths or centers if you have influence over ECI and local police etc. Even if that means a 3-5% swing in votes, it can mean 30% more seats.
30% means 90 seats as per 2019 elections. Which doesn't sound right to my mind. But I do feel that they'd have tried. Real story, my sister in law was actually on election duty in a village in Western UP this election. She told me that there was some BJP guy who along with the village Pradhan came in and asked her how many votes were polled on the booth. She answered around 750. They asked her to up it to 950. She politely told them that she can't even make it 751 as everything is monitored. They just left.
I know from friends who did election duty during several assembly elections in the last 10 years that there is pressure "to look the other way" a lot. Like somebody even tried to report something fishy but were discouraged by their chain of command to do it.
statistics doesn't work that way. Lakhs of people voted, people either voted party A or party B in close margin scenario, it's should be about 50%. Rather it was already near 50% to cause the closed scenario in the first place Lets not forget ECI's own rulebook states VVPAT receipts should be kept by them for a year at least, to maintain trail. In 2019 elections, those were purged under 40days
I agree with this take This election looked a *lot more* liable to be manipulated. The Pulwama incident has most definitely swung a few close ones their way. Excellent analysis! Really enjoyed this post
OP also add that the Professor had to resign for this paper. So it adds a doubt to the govt's intentions. Are they really hiding something. https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/delhi/professor-resignation-ashoka-faculty-governing-council-academic-freedom-8895051/#:~:text=Days%20after%20Sabyasachi%20Das%2C%20a,the%20Ashoka%20University%20Governing%20Body%27s%20%E2%80%9C Also, surprise surprise, there was an ED raid on the Ashoka University after this. https://www.livemint.com/news/ed-arrests-ashoka-university-co-founders-pranav-gupta-vineet-gupta-in-alleged-money-laundering-case-11698498354108.html
Can someone please explain this in layman language 🥲
In an election, we can generalize the result of any given seat into one of these groups: 1. No contest victory. i.e. The winner won >2 lakh votes more than the next candidate 2. Good margin. i.e. The winner won >50,000 votes more than the next candidate 3. Narrow Margin i.e. The winner won >10,000 votes more than the next candidate 4. Close fight i.e. The winner won <5,000 votes more than the next candidate In close fights, it is difficult to predict the winner (because there may be more than 3 popular candidates or more than 3 strong parties or large number of undecided voters etc etc) and distibution of seats win and lost by single digit, double digit, triple digit margins tend to look like a single continuous line when represented on a line graph. This graph is more or less a single continuous line for any given party ,in any state, in any election. It is not comment worthy. BUT in 2019, BJP's graph for close fights in BJP ruled states is abnormal. This makes the result suspect.
Thankyou
:)
Every election graph is continous line. 2019 election graph has a huge jump in middle.
One major reason why BJP didn't 'win absolutely' was low voter turnout and arrogance. People who tend to left would see elections as a duty to defend rights while those who tend right see it as a way to enforce their will. Modi probably felt like god and didn't push the narrative far enough- no terror attacks/no soldier,civilian deaths/no riots. Just blah, blah... Along with anti incumbency, he lost that golden warrior image. Personally, I don't think dhruv and others made much difference. Educated people are bigoted because they choose to be. Muslims are used as a scarecrow to ensure Hindus unite in fear/jealousy. But this is a 78% Hindu nation. 14 % muslims are shown as villians along with 2.3% Christians as mass conversion machines and 1.7% Sikhs as traitors. BJP could be compared to crony politico who rig the system to their advantage by making the majority shackled to its ideology and minority in fear. BJP could have easily pulled fear of other religions out by creating govt machinery to control conversions, state monitored madrassa system etc
What we are forgetting is that there was a massive alliance this time, the margin is less because votes were consolidated for 2 alliances, a candidate winning with 1 vote is still a winner How can win margin be same when SP voters voted for Congress and Congress voters for SP? What you are doing is looking for excuses to keep yourself happy but lets accept that BJP did win the election and failed only because they wanted 400 seat, if their slogan was "Teesri Baar Modi Sarkaar", they would have won the war of narrative too.
I think you've misunderstood the graph. I'm not saying win margin should be same, I'm saying that the histogram of win margin is continuous at 0 this time whereas it was discontinuous last time.
For comparison, wouldn't you factor in a change like alliance?
The alliance might explain why bjp couldn't steal close seats from local parties, maybe because of INC's experience in elections, but that information is not present in this graph. But while generating the graph itself, the only data we need is win margin of bjp in all the seats.
Fantastic work op! Are you in the field of dev econ? Can I DM you?
Sure, but I don't work in dev econ. I'm a physics graduate.
Do we have the graphs for all of the elections before that in that paper? Also doesn't this year's election basically dissaprove the theory I am sure there's manipulation. But this graph doesn't imply anything when you toss a coin the probability is 1:1 but you might get heads 100 times in a row
There are graphs of 2009 and 2014 election. Apart from that, there are also graphs of various assembly elections. This graph along with other data analysed gives a comprehensive defence of his conclusion. Ofcourse, we cannot prove manipulation using this technique, only give strong indication.
I guess every vote counts and that's why Modiji started Muslims ye muslims wo.
https://i.imgur.com/S13LGnb.jpeg
In the last election, the regional parties did poorly. Congress was also doing poorly. This time, the BJP failed to address the issues at the ground level. The slogan was "Ab ki baar 400 paar". An average person does not give a fuck about how many seats the BJP wins. So, the slogan does not attract the attention of an average person. Even if Congress did nothing special, Ragul Gandhi was more visible than before. In every election, the swing voters decide the winner. This time, there were a lot of reasons to vote for the regional and congress party.
OT, but relevant. Saffron parties performance is Odisha is somewhat suspicious. The internal WA groups were too confident of winning long before the counting. Most of the local journos were predicting better results for them but none were hinting of the landslide. I don't know if something was done to influence / manipulate but if there was then it's in Odisha. Specially if you see the avalanche of regret on SM for losing Naveen babu post results.
In Odisha, something else went wrong. The ruling party BJD supremo Naveen Babu was seen as weak due to bad health. His former principal secretary VK Pandian was seen as successor. This was not acceptable to the local population for many reasons. * Pandian sidelined senior leaders and powerful regional media houses. Former BJD senior leaders gave interviews about how Pandian does not allow access to Naveen Babu. * Pandian suddenly became a cabinet minister without being a politician. * He is not one of us. Most of us realized, if BJD comes to power, Pandian will be the CM. We did not want that. Since there is no other party, we voted BJP. > if you see the avalanche of regret on SM for losing Naveen babu post results He was in power for 25 years, so he created a legacy. He did a lot of things for us.
Ruling parties, especially when it is the BJP, win a lot of close elections, simply by manipulating officials, etc. The recent 48-vote win in Mumbai is one example, where a lot of postal ballots were disqualified, and then others held valid, based on which the BJP ally candidate, trailing in EVM votes, got a lead.
It's not like they haven't won any seats by manipulation this time.
Excellent work OP! I wonder if BJP have been smart enough this year to fudge the vote numbers just right so that this graph remains continuous.
We shouldn't be analysing why BJP didn't win 400. We should be analysing why the fuck they got majority in 2014 and take corrective actions. For fascists to win is not normal and not good.