Narrow wins and losses for BJP

 
Seats that I expect that will be won/lost by BJP by a margin lesser than 25,000 votes. I expect 87 seats to be such narrowly contested overall in my population space. Of these 62 are being narrowly won (29% of my overall prediction of BJP's seat tally of 215), and 25 being narrowly lost. I expect average margin of victory in such seats to be about 11,000 and average margin of loss to be about 12,000.

List given below. Believe it or not. I don't have a personal stake in any of them. Hope the relevant people to take notice and work harder.

Narrow wins

Madhya Pradesh: Bhind, Satna, Mandla (N), Ratlam (N), Khargone

Maharashtra: Dhule, Nagpur (N), Gadchiroli (N), Chandrapur, Palghar (N), Pune (N)

Chattisgarh: Bilaspur, Kanker

Karnataka: Gulbarga (N), Bellary, Upudi-Chikmangallur, Tumkur, Chikballur (N)

Bihar: Sitamarhi (N), Madhubani, Siwan (N), Sasaram (N)

Jharkhand: Godda, Lohardaga

UTs + NCR: Andaman/ Nicobar, Dadra/ NH, South Delhi (N)

Rajasthan: Churu, Jhunjhunu (N), Jaipur rural (N), Karauli Dholpur (N), Chittorgarh (N), Rajsamand (N)

Gujarat: Mahesana, Porbandar (N), Jamnagar (N), Amreli, Panchmahal, Bardoli (N)

Haryana: Faridabad (N)

Himachal Pradesh: Kangra

Uttar Pradesh: Lalganj (N), Deoria (N), Akbarpur (N), Faizabad (N), Gonda (N), Mirzapur (N), Varanasi, Amroha (N), Rampur (N), Fatehpur (N), Allahabad (N), Bahraich (N), Fatehpur sikri (N), Aligarh (N), Phoolpur (N), Maharajganj (N), Sitapur (N), Saharanpur (N)

Orissa: Mayurbhanj (N), Balasore (N)

Narrow losses

Madhya Pradesh: Indore (N)

Maharashtra: Bhiwandi

Chattisgarh: Durg (N)

Karnataka: Bidar (N), Davengere (N), Bangalore South

UTs + NCR: West Delhi

Punjab: Amritsar (N)

Rajasthan: Ajmer, Kota

Gujarat: Junagadh (N), Anand, Dahod, Bharuch (N)

Uttaranchal: Tehri Garwhal, Nanital Udhamsingh

Assam: Jorhat

Uttar Pradesh: Basti, Bulandshahr, Robertsganj, Domariyaganj, Nagina, Firozabad, Mohanlalganj, Shahjahanpur

N = seats which are giving effect opposite of the last time. eg. if a seat – Mandla was lost by BJP in the last elections and is being won now, it will have a ‘N’ suffix, and vice versa.

Election prediction for BJP

With the elections looming next year we have scores of pundits pontificating on polls on primetime. So I thought, why don’t I give it a shot. After all given their past records in forecasting, I can hardly do worse J

Anyway, I am not a statistician and given this handicap (or is it a strength?), I am not entirely convinced that a sample size of a 4-5,000 (a dozen or so respondents per constituency) will given prediction with any credible degree of accuracy. Imagine the same pool of a few thousand broken up into different constituency, different communities, different age groups, different age groups, different income groups etc etc. So how accurate can a statistical prediction be? I frankly don’t know. To my discredit of course.

What I have attempted to do is a seat-by-seat prediction across states. The calculation can be described as making some educated (and some uneducated) guesstimates of factors such as incumbency, increase in voting percentage, the Namo swing factor etc etc. In fact, the genesis of this calculation is the assumption that 2014 polls will be the most presidential style elections in India since perhaps the JP movement.

 
Let me first spell out the seat predictions, state-wise:

Uttar Pradesh                                         52 out of 80

Madhya Pradesh                                    25 out of 29
Karnataka                                               22 out of 28                                         
Bihar                                                   21 out of 40
Gujarat                                                19 out of 26
Maharashtra                                        15 out of 48
Jharkhand                                               12 out of 14
Rajasthan                                               11 out of 25
Chattisgarh                                             10 out of 11
Assam                                                05 out of 14
Haryana                                                  04 out of 10
Himachal Pradesh                                  04 out of 04
UTs+ NCR                                              03 out of 14
Orissa/ Odisha                                        03 out of 21
Punjab                                                 02 out of 13
Uttarakhand                                            02 out of 05
Goa                                                         01 out of 02
Arunachal Pradesh                                 01 out of 02
J&K                                                         01 out of 06
West Bengal                                        01 out of 42
Kerala                                                     01 out of 20
Total                                                     215 out of 454  

IBTL prediction                                      163 out of 543

Times Now Prediction                           162 out of 543
(based on IBTL tweet on 16^th Oct 13)

Andhra Pradesh (42 seats), Tamil nadu (39 seats) and north eastern states will be extras. I have not estimated these seats given the lower chances of BJP here and paucity of time for me. Anything here will be a bonus. I have assumed a 5% Namo vote share swing in Uttar Pradesh, but if this was to be 6% the seats would rise to 54 and if it was 10% the seats would be 65. But I have left it at 52 for the sake of being conservative. Notably, I assume BJP enters no alliances in UP pre poll.

I assume BSY will merge with BJP in Karnataka. The key point to be noted is that given the ‘quant’ nature of the estimates, these estimates make more sense when taken overall. For example, there are a lot of people who believe BJP will sweep the NCR in the Lok Sabha polls. However, my quant model does not give such results, hence I have given only 1 seat to BJP here. Similarly my estimates of MP and Karnataka may seem on the higher side compensated by Rajasthan and Gujarat that seem lower. But I have to apply the same logic uniformly to be sure I don’t unfairly penalise or give benefit to BJP.

While I do have some interesting observations, I do not have the time to detail them out now. One statement though: BJP has in the last 10 years given away a lot of easy seats to allies and even in a few places it was present it seemed comatose. Orissa for example where BJP used to win in several seats with a massive 30-50% vote share is now a distant dream for the party. West Bengal where BJP contestants get about 2-6% share of votes in virtually every seat has been ignored, as has the southern states. In fact, it seemed that the BJP leadership wanted to convert it into a JDU style regional party. However, it is my assumption and hope and prayer that the advent of Namo will change this comatose and lazy style of functioning and recharge the cadre to a national level.

As you can see under the table presented (above), my prediction is a more decisive than other polls (IBTL and Times Now) that appear to mirror each other. Are they too afraid to stray from consensus or am I plain wrong…only time will tell.