The saffron juggernaut: The rise of Bharatiya Janata Party in the NorthEast

Since the BJP came to power at the Centre in 2014, its average vote share in the northeast has jumped from 3.9 per cent to 27 per cent

Since 2014, the average percentage of votes the Congress drew in six of the seven northeastern states — Meghalaya, Tripura, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam and Manipur — has dropped from 38.1 per cent to 24.7 per cent. The average number of seats it has won has nearly halved from 34.8 to 19.5.

 Since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power at the Centre in 2014, its average vote share in the northeast has jumped from 3.9 per cent to 27 per cent. From winning an average of 1.5 seats in the six states’ elections between 2009 and 2014, the BJP has won an average of 23.5 seats in the region since 2014.

In the February 2018 elections, the BJP’s vote share of 27 per cent was only a few percentage points higher than that of the Congress’ 24.7 per cent. The saffron party, however, with more seats and by swiftly forming coalitions with regional parties is now part of the governments in all the six states.

The two national parties are yet to contest in Mizoram, which is set to go to the polls later this year. The state has not been included in our analysis.
 

Data and text: IndiaSpend

Until a year prior to the BJP’s win in the 2014 general elections, the Congress had enjoyed a considerably larger vote share — ranging between 24 per cent and 36 per cent. The BJP had a vote share of below 2 per cent.