BJP’s Demographic Dividend in the 2014 General Elections: An Empirical Analysis

Abstract

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) swept the 2014 General Elections in India and emerged as a single party with absolute majority, a result not witnessed since 1984. Not only did it win a majority of seats, it also managed to increase its vote share in almost all states between 2009 and 2014. Using state-level data, we show that BJP's extraordinary poll results relied crucially on attracting young, especially first time, electors. An orchestrated exercise that gave over eighty million people the right to participate in largely free and fair elections to choose their representatives was easily the biggest such experiment in human history. The 2014 General Elections in India become even more significant when we consider that India is home to one-fourth of the world's poor. Each election is thought to be a game changer for the economically and socially marginalized in the country, and is often seen as a referendum between two opposing ideologies, namely that of the Indian National Congress (INC) representing the left of centre economic policies with pluralistic social underpinnings and that of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which represents a right wing cultural and economic philosophy. This election marks a major shift in the polity of India with the BJP not only changing the Westminster style Parliamentary elections into a US style Presidential election revolving around personalities, but also using unprecedented amounts of financial