The Indian election results have been pouring in, with the Congress/UPA government set to return to power for another five years. Here is the New York Times’ story; apparently, this is the first time since Nehru that an Indian political party has served out the full five years, and then been reelected to power.
I wanted to give readers a chance to share information and suggest sites that are gathering results in various parts of the country. I am especially curious to see what happens with Shashi Tharoor in Trivandrum (I blogged about him a few weeks ago), and of course the political landscape as a whole. As of 1:00 am EDT, the UPA is up over the NDA/BJP around 220-150 [update: the final number for the UPA will be something more like 259]. The UPA is going to stay in, and even consolidate its power — which means, greater independence from the Left. Manmohan Singh is likely to remain Prime Minister for awhile, and perhaps it’s going to be curtains for L.K. Advani’s Prime Ministerial aspirations.
I was watching IBN live here.
The NDTV VoteMap is pretty nice, though it would be better if there were a way to see who held a given state or a given district earlier.
On Twitter, the tag seems to be #indiavotes09. The stream is moving very quickly. There is something called Tweetgrid, which lets you see feeds for six Twitter keywords at once.
Shashi Tharoor has his own Twitter feed: ShashiTharoor. As of now, he is up by 30,000 votes, with more than half of the votes counted.
The BBC’s live results are pretty good. As of this writing, Varun Gandhi (the communal one, from Sanjay’s wing of the family) is leading, and Mayawati’s BSP is losing. In Kerala, the left is likely to decline dramatically from 2004. The Communists are in decline in West Bengal too, presumably in payback for their handling of Nandigram. Lalu Prasad Yadav, who had earlier decided to pull support from Congress, is now admitting it was a mistake, as his RJD party ended up losing seats.
Via Ultrabrown, Bloomberg has a story, with Congress leaders using “Jai Ho” as a victory chant. Also via Ultrabrown, Mayawati is going to lock up victorious BSP candidates, to prevent them from being picked off by other parties. It’s a typical Mayawati thing to do, and presumably illegal — though that’s never stopped her before.
Please suggest any sites with data and analysis that you would recommend.
You can check them live here http://www.ndtv.com/news/videos/video_live.php?id=LIVE_BG24x7
You can look at leads for individual seats here http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/pollresults/4535661.cms?stateid=6
Tharoor is going to win. He is leading by around 25K right now.
yup, looks like singh becomes the first non-nehru/gandhi congress pm to return to power. and they’ll probably need to rely on the left much. i suppose the best you could hope for in this election.. an actual decisive result!
Currently, I think the analysis on CNN IBN is decent – earlier they had haf of The Hindu’s opinion page with P Sainath and S Vadararajan on. Now they have Ram Guha, Chandan Mitra, etc. Good stuff. NDTV has Shekhar Gupta and Vir Sanghvi (worth a few laughs) but one can only watch 1 station at a time
Well, the word is out – Shashi won.
NYT has an interesting observation (obvious one though). Excerpt from NYT:
The incumbent Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was expected to continue in office. Not since the country’s founding prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, has an incumbent prime minister finished a full five year term in office and been returned to power.
Two main additional sites; Yahoo has a good break down of results by party and state:
http://in.elections.yahoo.com/index.html
While Google has the same by constituency and also some hilarious quotes under the “What Our Leaders Say Section”
http://www.google.co.in/intl/en/landing/loksabha2009/
Can’t say too much at this stage; towards the end most of the people I spoke to pointed towards a Congress-UPA win but I was sceptical. What is really surprising is the number of seats that Congress has won in UP – a state where it pretty much didn’t exist as a party for many years and has virtually nil presence on the ground and the massive in-roads Trinamool has made into the Red Bastion of West Bengal, where it has really destroyed the CPI(M)’s supremacy. The latter could be an important break in ending the hegemony of the Communist Left in the state and seeing a returing to a normal bi-polar system if the same feat can be repeated in the assembly elections. I am quite surprised that Congress has done so well, I don’t think they have done much to deserve this over the past few years really but I think it is a success built on a weak foundation and won’t be repeated next time unless they improve their performance in power.
Chidambaram lost which is good, Shibu Soren hopefully will go on to lose and Lalu is trailing in Patilputra though since he is contesting from multiple constituencies he should win in one (unfortunately).
http://www.eciresults.nic.in/ is the official site.
Yes, the EC site shows the breakdown according to constituency and state as well as party and will be the offical result. It will be updated more slwoly though, of course. It looks like Chidambaram has won his seat after all after a ‘recount’.
http://eciresults.nic.in/Results.htm
The people have spoken. The bastards!
Just kidding…Congress’s victory can be largely attributed to the performance of one man – Manmohan Singh. He did a pretty decent job over the last five years.
BJP’s loss can be largely attributed to the performance of one man – LK Advani. He should step down as the leader of the opposition.
M. Nam
So its UPA back. How weird is it that Manmohan Singh didnt even contest the election !!! How is he going to be “representing” the people??? Another weird quirk of Indian democracy. Advani has already announced that he is stepping down. In spite of the major recession the ruling party doing better than the last time, in my view shows that the middle class vote does not matter in India.
Middle class people are more likely to be part of the economy that got affected by the recession where as the poor folks are part of the “parallel” economy. Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme may have helped. That and the giving of debt relief to farmers, both of which were shockingly irresponsible and shamelessly pandering acts of political opportunism, but thats what works in India. One silver lining is that the new UPA government will not have to be at the mercy of the stupid whims of the LEFT parties. May be Manmohan Singh, the economist, will have free-er reign to enact economically responsible policies that are not short sighted.
Another site with a live stream is Times Now: http://www.timesnow.tv/
They’re discussing possible coalition scenarios.
You know who replaces him when he steps down right? I, personally don’t have a problem with Modi as an individual, but he’s a hell of a polarizing figure.
chidambaram won.
huge props to rahul gandhi on delivering up – massive turnaround from previous time + defeating mayawati in her own stronghold are very creditable electoral achievements. especially since the cong did it by themselves without alliances.
You should take the time to scroll down and read comment #9 where I acknowledge this due to the recount. Another odious idiot we will have to put up with for another 5 years.
Unfortunately the convicted murderer won. Way to go people !!!
Crime does not pay: Top 20 most wanted stay winless
best news for today!
I am so happy Congress won and that India didn’t elect a communal party into power! India for all Indians, not just hindus.
The Hindu has a nice rolling update that I followed throughout, along with other sites , The Election commissions site as mentioned before is pretty comprehensive. This one has the individual states.
“huge props to rahul gandhi on delivering up – massive turnaround from previous time + defeating mayawati in her own stronghold are very creditable electoral achievements. especially since the cong did it by themselves without alliances.”
apparently manmohan singh wishes rahul gandhi to be in his cabinet. i hope not, at least not for another five years. he needs to deliver for the next five years, and not just during election time, before he should be shoehorned into the cabinet.
Actually, Indira Gandhi was PM 1966-67; and then, after the 1967 elections, in 1967-71; and then again, after the 1971 elections, in 1971-77. (The 1971 Elections were called a year early, she won a landslide; the landslide would have been a much larger avalanche had she waited till they were due, in 1972.)
So, while the claim ‘since Nehru’ is technically true, in point of fact Indira Gandhi served uninterrupted as PM 1966-67;67-71;71-77 (and then again 1980-84). In each case, her Congress party had a majority on its own (though reduced in 1967 from 1962, and then again in 1969 [when the Congress split and she was supported by the Left from outside the government, rather like Manmohan Singh during 2004-2008]).
BTW, http://indianelections.blogadda.com/ is a very fine ‘blog aggregator’ blog – you will find links to news reportage, cartoon blogs, flickr sites, youtube videos, links to candidate blogs (including Tharoor’s), commentary blogs, etc.
Kabir, how patronizing coming from someone who has no problem with Pakistan being defined as a Muslim state or Kashmir gaining independence as a Muslim state. How are the aspirations of the Hindutvaadis any different from the those of the founder of Pakistan?
photos from the indian election in today’s Star. from the series – the Gandhi scions are a study in contrast. one looks like a salamander that’s just swallowed a fly. the other is just really photogenic. this mahabharat has only just begun.
Congress has demonstrated that they are no panacea, but I feel strongly they are the lesser of two evils. Im happy about the relatively strong verdict as well. Its hard to interpret the victory though. There appear to me many independent reasons.
Overall, the Congress led UPA has provided decent governance by Indian standards over the last 5 years. There has been some improvements in infrastructure (esp railways but also roads), a vast improvement in relationship to the west, and some progress in improving rural services.
Many challenges lie ahead – primarily the apparent implosion of Pakistan and how the situation there may affect the volatile Hindu-Muslim situation in India, continuing extreme poverty, a spreading Naxalite insurgency. Caste parties are continuing to demand reservations in the private sector, vested interests oppose labor and land reforms, wasted agricultural subsidies strangle the economy and despoil the land. The strange, halting and yet inspiring progress India’s people continues.
I would be really surprised if this was the case. We will have to wait and see the poll data to determine what happened here. The SP collapsed and I think the Muslim vote shifted to the Congress as well and the BSP I think is suffering the fallout from its sarvajan strategy which was going to run into trouble sooner or later. But this result came as a real surprise to me and got me wrong-footed.
Most of this was front-loaded though in the first two years of the UPA regime and it should be remembered that Manmohan Singh, Chidambaram and co. did their best to hobble initatives like the NREGA and the Bharat Nirman schemes and others like the RTI came about only because of civil society pressure and Sonia Gandhi’s personal intervention. After the demise of the UPA steering committee many of the initatives dried up or were quietly shelved as SG was effectively more sidelined from setting the agenda. There hasn’t been a serious re-thinking of the economis growth model adopted and a package that can deliver sustained employment growth and social development; just more of the same old tired liberalisation cliches and the current industrialisation path which has its clear problems. I don’t think Manmohan Singh et al. will have the imagination to really build a strong ‘developmental state’ which is what India needs.
i agree. yes, this was a bold decision that worked, but one success (or luck? it’s hard to say) does not a leader make.
one article i was reading is that he focused on improving the grassroots orgs of the congress on up. if that is indeed true, he has the right electoral strategy because the cong dominance for 30+ years was because of their strong grassroots orgs, and that is still one of their biggest advantages. he’s young, and if he’s smart enough politically, he should focus on the long game and work on fixing the grassroot orgs so that they can deliver him the next time around.
is it before or after she “blames muslims” 🙂
hilarious.. believe what i say, not what i do 🙂
I am glad the Indian Taliban lost. On a sour note, Advani will now step aside for the butcher of Gujarat to become the leader for the BJP.
Don’t worry Pagal, us NRI’s just need to step up funding–c’mon guys–BJP will win soon enough!
In the storied character arc of the bjp, the ex-radical now-moderate temple razer will be replaced by the ex-radical now-moderate murderer, with the now-radical prodigal son Varun Gandhi waiting in the wings to be transformed into a moderate ex-radical when his time comes.
BJP more or less retained the vote share and the number of seats are down just by 10+. Congress gained seats and vote share from its erstwhile allies.
this is a pretty bad performance by an opposition party that claims to be competitive, in a country where anti-incumbency is the dominant force. plus huge debacle in rajasthan. pretty much holding pattern in gujarat, modi’s bastion. also, i think the stats are that bjp won only 15-20% of the constituencies he campaigned in outside gujarat- and the loss in rajasthan in western india isn’t a good sign for him either.
That’s not the case anymore.. It’s pro incumbency as reflected in the results of almost all non-left major states like TN / Orissa / AP / Karnataka / Gujarat / Maharashtra / MP / Rajasthan etc..
I don’t think we can decide on the effectiveness of a leader by the losses in a single election campaign . If that’s the case then it applies to everyone across the board including Rahul Gandhi who just tasted some measure of victory after a long time campaigning.
i am talking about a single constituency but nationwide efficacy. anyways, the proof will be in the congress governance in the next 5 years. if they do a good job, especially now that they are not shackled by the left, and use this time to build up a strong ground game similar to what got them victory in up, the bjp will have a very hard time coming back.
i am talking about a single constituency
i am NOT talking about a single constituency.
Here is a concise pdf file from the Hindu. It would have been even better, had they included the votes of all the candidates or atleast the top 5 in each constituency. Anyone know of a good site with the votes of all the candidates in each constituency?
Here is the list of winning candidates from the election commission.
I would recomment BlogAdda for their aggregation on Indian Elections. I’ve been following http://indianelections.blogadda.com for live twitter & bog updates including lot many things as the old SMer suggested,
yeah, the bjp managed to hold on only in gujarat and karnataka, everywhere else congress or other parties succeeded, plus congress took other states from third front/left. this is pretty huge and uncharacteristic for indian elections in the last 2 decades.
also big loss for modi in maharashtra for which he was the guy running the election, not to mention rajasthan, punjab, orissa, tamilnadu.
I am talking about a single election season campaign (i.e 2009 campaign)
Khoofi remarked:
No it is actually over before it even began. Karna is going nowhere. In 5 yrs, Arjuna will be ready and will rule. Why bother even having elections, I say? It’s going to be Rahul Rahul and Rahul for a good long time.
Am disappointed Jayalalitha lost.
It may just be that the middle class is smart enough to realize that the recession is a global one and has nothing to do with ruling party. If anything, the Indian economy has done better than most.
You might have that the wrong way round. The poor people have little tax obligations and would have no reason to be a part of the parallel economy. It is the people who are better off who participate in the parallel economy. Or maybe our definitions of poor and middle class are different.
Re. REGW and debt relief, I think it might be a better way to stimulate the economy than most others, especially as economic growth becomes more consumption driven.
Traditionally in India, a failed monsoon has meant that the ruling party loses. Maybe we are finally seeing an end of blame-the-ruling-party mentality. Or more cynically maybe, the people are smart enough to realize that inspite of promises, the alternatives are just as bad, if not worse.
Random thought, and question for the readers: If there was today, a leader of the calliber of Gandhi/Mandela/Kennedy/etc. in India, would it be possible for him/her to rise to the top?
Word Rahul.
Many months ago somebody referred to Modi as the possible next prime-minister and I shuddered. So, man, this election is a very pleasant surprise.
Hmmmm…many of the people expressing happiness over the defeat of the BJP seem to be secretly mourning the loss of their favorite red herring. Cheer up, you’ve still got Kashmir to be indignant about 🙂
They’re not, and Pakistanis who talk like that whilst propounding their own religious exclucivist supremacist nationalism, a nationalism that accomodates bigots and actively kills those marginal to their state are hypocrites.
But asking a Pakistani that question will lead to accusations of persecution, bigotry, and mental confusion, so it’s probably better for his peace of mind to not actually ask it at all.
That’s simplistic. It more often than not depends on both how good the performance of the incumbent is and how bad the performance of the opposition is. In Karnataka, the Congress has been in disarray – too many leaders, confusion. Thus the BJP wins. In Maharashtra, the Govt is one of the worst but still won simply because the opposition was terrible – since Pramod Mahajan the BJP has been in bad shape and the Sena is a mess. NCP has a strong stable base and also people saw more stability and better governance with a Congress government which tilted the fine balance in its favor. In Bihar, Nitish, in Gujarat Modi and Sheila Dixit in Delhi won because of good governance. Similarly, Mayawati lost because the Dalits have started becoming disillusioned – she’s plundered the state, reached out to others while they have not made much advancement considering what was promised. TN can hardly be called a victory for DMK, they did not lose but they did not win either. And there is the left which lost because it was bad both nationally and regionally (Nandigram, returning migrants from the Gulf in Kerala for which nothing is being done). Rajasthan too – the BJP had lost but it has been a fresh change in dynamics, incumbency would apply in a longer time frame. What I have found exciting is that people have punished bad performance and rewarded parties which have provided better governance. I definitely hope that this is a long term trend.
What??. DMK+ put up a splendid performance of winning 28/40.. I mentioned it to refute the anti-incumbency factor.
I know that there are other factors that resulted in the above pro-incumbent performance, like the splitting of ant-incumbency votes by state specific strong parties like the PRP in AP, DMDK in TN, MNS in Maha, JD(S) in Karnataka that could have eaten into the opposition votes.
@louiecypher (#23)
Actually, you don’t know me or my position on issues at all, so you shouldn’t make assumptions. I don’t like that Pakistan is defined as an “Islamic Republic”, but I’m not in a position to change that. I also think Kashmiris should have the right to become independent if they want. An independent Kashmir doesn’t necessarily have to be a Muslim state.
I am against communalism and exclusionary rhetoric in any form, hence my happiness that the secular Congress won instead of the “Hindutva” BJP.
Actually, I do know your positions. You post regularly here as an apologist for the state of Pakistan which has from its inception been a Muslim state. And you also say that Pakistan has a legitimate beef regarding Kashmir. If Kashmir is absorbed by Pakistan it will of course not be secular.
No, you don’t know my positions. I am not an “apologist” for anything. In my previous comment, I said I support Kashmiri independence. Independence does not necessarily mean absorption into the state of Pakistan. If you actually read what I wrote and didn’t presume that you knew more than I do about my own positions, I think you’d be better off. Anyway, I have better things to do than fight with you, so I will just not respond to you from now on.