Indian Elections 2024

[Jacob]

Do any of you have a good read on what likely coalition scenarios look like and how they might play out?

[Gups]

Looks like BJP doing much worse than expected - losing 60-70 seats. It will still have a majority with its allies but well short of the super majority it was seeking.

Bad news for the Muslim population.

Much better than expected though. Seems like the lower castes aren't buying Modi's crap anymore.

[Josquius]

Why were lower caste people voting for a guy who specifically shat on them to begin with?

Aye, same story in the west of course. But the analogy seems less poor whites voting Trump and more black guys in the 50s voting for segregationist politicians.

[Sheilbh]

Do any of you have a good read on what likely coalition scenarios look like and how they might play out?

The opposition at a national level formed an pre-election coalition with lots of regional opposition parties (which includes a lot of parties ). According to Wiki almost 40 parties are involved, although not sure all will have won Lok Sabha seats:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_National_Developmental_Inclusive_Alliance

The BJP also have a number of allied parties in their NDA and I have read that INDIA may try to pick off a couple of the BJP's allies to try and form a government.

It is all part of why even with Modi, I think India's democracy is kind of amazing - an electorate of almost a billion, two thirds turn out voting over six weeks on seven days across the states and relatively consistently unpredictable results that bear little resemblance to the polls

Edit: And no idea if INDIA will plausibly be able to tempt those NDA aligned parties.

[Gups]

I think they've already said they are sticking with BJP but make no mistakes, Modi's power is significantly diminished.

[Jacob]

Why were lower caste people voting for a guy who specifically shat on them to begin with?

Aye, same story in the west of course. But the analogy seems less poor whites voting Trump and more black guys in the 50s voting for segregationist politicians.

Did (does) Modi treat the lower castes poorly?

From what little I've read the BJP has a strong network of activists helping people locally and has enacted fairly popular handouts.

He also comes from (or presents as coming from) a fairly regular background - I recently read a quote where he said something like "graduating from school and becoming a teacher would have been a major achievement for someone like me...."

[The Minsky Moment]

My sense of the BJP was that similar to the Republican Party in the US, it is an historically elite-oriented party that has exploited cultural hot button issues to rally support from lower income strata, to pursue an agenda that favors the rich economic interests.  But I'm not that familiar with the overall political situation and no doubt there are complexities to the political scene I'm missing.

[Sheilbh]

My sense of the BJP was that similar to the Republican Party in the US, it is an historically elite-oriented party that has exploited cultural hot button issues to rally support from lower income strata, to pursue an agenda that favors the rich economic interests.  But I'm not that familiar with the overall political situation and no doubt there are complexities to the political scene I'm missing.

Also on Jos' analogy, I'm not sure it's right.

I feel like a core message/part of Hindutva is that we are all Hindus regardless of caste and what matters is that we as Hindus have dominance and rule in society over Muslims. So it is more like Republicans or historically Southern Democrats in that sense. Especially if you add in things like activism targeting growing your support among lower caste communities as well as things like various forms of subsidies on daily essentials.

The other thing is all of the stuff about the BJP and caste v Congress makes sense in theory. But surely it is kind of undermined by Congress treating leadership of the party and country as a sinecure for probably the most famous Brahmin family in India?

[Sheilbh]

I know this is nothing new but I always end up doing a double take when I see a photo captioned or line in political news about India about Chief Minister Stalin

[Sheilbh]

Listening to a podcast on the result and absolutely love the expert's partial defence of the exit poll that generally they were right and only got Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and West Bengal wrong. Unfortunately they are three of the four biggest states with something like 400 million residents

Also interesting that they noted it's already having an impact. Normally everything is based around Modi - and that's already shifted as the coalition meeting wasn't everyone coming to see Modi but all three party leaders together on the top table.

[Josquius]

In a nation as hyper diverse as India it stands to reason polling would be an absolute PITA to get even remotely right.
It could be that getting things within even remotely the same universe as the actual result is counted as a success in their world?

I wonder why they'd get those 3 in particular wrong. They don't strike me as too related, other than the most populated factor. Are they pretty monocultural states and they overcontrolled for diversity or particularly urban or...?

[Barrister]

In a nation as hyper diverse as India it stands to reason polling would be an absolute PITA to get even remotely right.
It could be that getting things within even remotely the same universe as the actual result is counted as a success in their world?

I wonder why they'd get those 3 in particular wrong. They don't strike me as too related, other than the most populated factor. Are they pretty monocultural states and they overcontrolled for diversity or particularly urban or...?

So I think my view of India is somewhat outdated in a "Slumdog Millionaire" kind of way - that big portions of the population are so poor they have no access to media or phones.  Polling would be near-impossible in those situations.

But given how cheap cell phones are now it's probably not true any more.

[Zanza]

Everybody has a mobile phone and 5G in India.

[Sheilbh]

In a nation as hyper diverse as India it stands to reason polling would be an absolute PITA to get even remotely right.
It could be that getting things within even remotely the same universe as the actual result is counted as a success in their world?

No. The exit pollster was in tears on TV and being comforted by anchors:
https://x.com/scribe_it/status/1797939975553749282

I wonder why they'd get those 3 in particular wrong. They don't strike me as too related, other than the most populated factor. Are they pretty monocultural states and they overcontrolled for diversity or particularly urban or...?

So they had a journalist and an academic talking, the journalist said that Maharashtra wasn't a total surprise - apparently BJP and the other parties all thought something was up in that state and it might swing against them.

But everywhere else that did was. So no idea how they got it wrong because, from what I could tell listening to them talk, everyone's still trying to understand what happened and how.

[grumbler]

John Oliver had a good piece on the Indian elections and Modi: