As election season comes to an end read 50 data rich stories from HT's 2024 poll coverage
Dear reader, There is no dearth of numbers as far as Indian elections are concerned. The 2024 elections had almost a billion eligible voters to elect 543 MPs from a total of 8,360 candidates across 28 states and eight union territories (UTs) in seven phases. HT’s data journalism team has churned out more than 50 data stories over the past two-and-a-half months to give readers an insight into what the mammoth exercise entails. The idea is, in a nutshell, to highlight factors that could affect the results at the local and national levels rather than speculating. For more, you can find all of these stories in the Number Theory section on the HT app. Here is a thematic snapshot of the best of our work over the entire campaign period. |
The phase-wise data guide to elections Even a single phase of Indian elections involves more voters than the entire electorate of large countries. For example, the first phase of the 2024 elections had 166.4 million registered voters, which is more than the 161.3 million voters who voted in the 2020 presidential polls in the United States. We did two stories on the day of every phase of the elections. The first looked at the basic contours of the contest, the stakes involved for major parties in a given phase, a rural-urban breakup of constituencies polling in a given phase and past turnout in each of these phases. The second analysed the cohesion or lack of it within the two major alliances in the elections, namely, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and the Congress led Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA). Similarly, stories were done for each phase of the elections. You can find all of them here. |
Deep dive in state-specific contests While national factors do play a role in shaping the mandate in a Lok Sabha election, it would be an oversight if one did not look at the specifics of state-wise contests. Almost half of all Number Theories published during the course of the campaign tried to decode state-specific dynamics of the 2024 contest. They looked at questions based on change in alliance equations in states such as Maharashtra and Bihar, the importance of parties which are otherwise in decline but still have a support base to reckon with such as the Bahujan Samaj Party in Uttar Pradesh, regional difference in political dynamics in states such as West Bengal and the contours of elections in large metropolitan regions such as Mumbai. In the state of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, where caste equations have an overwhelming influence in deciding elections, we built a caste-wise list of candidates from the NDA and INDIA blocks, which would help us decipher the caste-wise dynamics when the results are declared. HT also looked at the state of play in other states such as Odisha, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Punjab and Assam. |
Data analysis of macro themes The BJP went to the elections with the slogan of 370 seats for itself and 400 seats for the NDA. Is this hyperbole or in the realm of the achievable? This story used just one chart to describe the BJP’s challenge of breaching the 370-seat barrier in these elections. Another story we did classified the BJP’s alliance strategy in elections into three categories; absolute confidence, calculated risks and complete risk aversion, across states. The Congress is contesting just 328 PCs in these elections, the lowest this number has ever been for India’s grand old party. Would sharing a higher number of seats with alliance partners approach work for the Congress in these elections? Our analysis found that Congress’s political predicament in the last couple of decades runs deeper than just alliance tactics. Demand for a caste census and doing away with the 50% cap on caste-based reservations has been the biggest issue for the opposition in these elections. Will this have political traction? We did a two-part series and using data from various government surveys to answer this question. Another topic of constant diatribes between the BJP and the opposition in these elections was the question of erstwhile opposition leaders joining the BJP allegedly under pressure from investigative agencies. We used Trivedi Centre for Political Data’s statistics on turncoats along with our own research to look at the role turncoats have played in Indian elections in this story. Results aside, what is the nature of the electorate in Indian elections? We did two stories which gave us a portrait of the first-time voters in these elections and how India’s electorate has changed over the years. India passed a bill for women’s reservation in parliament and assemblies just before these elections. While the bill will only come in effect in 2026 or later, India’s legislatures continue to be extremely under representative for women even though women voters have been outnumbering men in recent elections. This story looked at the challenges facing women in politics and society at large. |
Elections and the economy Elections, most experts agree are more about economic sentiment than actual performance. We used the RBI’s Consumer Confidence Survey to track economic sentiment under the two Narendra Modi governments in this story. Stock markets have reached new all-time highs during the election cycle and no less than the Prime Minister has claimed that they will go even higher after the results. We did a story looking at stock market movements in every election cycle since 1991. Another running political economy debate in the recent past has been a K-shaped recovery in the Indian economy. Economists from Azim Premji University looked at household finances in the last five years in this story for our data pages. Actual heat during the polls surpassed political heat A weather station in Delhi crossed 50 degrees Celsius on the penultimate day of the campaign in these elections. We had warned about the heat during these elections in a story on April 16 and found that parts of the country with active campaigning had actually been hotter during the election cycle. |
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