Why BJP will still win the 2029 elections

It’s 2011. The time of the Arab Spring movement, where anti-government protests began in Tunisia and spread to the entire middle east. People were fed up with the corruption, repression and a lack of political freedom, and wanted a change. It was one of the largest protests the world had seen.

Youssef, a citizen of Egypt and active protestor in the movement, was 24 when their president Hosni Mubarak resigned because of the protests. Youssef cried in the middle of Tahrir Square along with everyone else. He had missed 3 weeks of his teaching job to be there, and told himself, very clearly, standing in that crowd, that Egypt was finally going to change for good.

For a while, it looked like he was right. Egypt held an actual election in 2012. Mohamed Morsi, part of the social movement called Muslim Brotherhood, won it fair and square.

But then in July 2013, the army removed Morsi from power.

The crackdown that followed killed more than a thousand people. Youssef watched friends get arrested. Today Egypt has the same autocratic rule it had before the protest. Just a different name on the office door.

India just experienced their Arab Spring moment with the CJP and student-led protests. Even though citizens are clearly frustrated with the government and how it is handling things, history and data point the same way: BJP still holds the advantage in 2029.

That’s what I’ll talk about in today’s newsletter: 4 reasons why the BJP will still win the 2029 elections.

In 2024 the BJP seats dropped to 240 (from 303 in 2019). The Congress on the other hand, went from 52 seats in 2019 to 99 seats in 2024. Almost a 100% increase.

That should have been the opening every opposition party dreams of. But instead, parties within the INDIA block are competing with each other in state elections.

• AAP exited the INDIA block coalition

• In Bengal, both TMC and Congress fought the elections separately, rather than as a united front

• Congress and SP, both part of the INDIA block, are contesting their own candidates in the UP MLC elections

(We all saw what happened in Bengal)

Researchers who studied the Arab Spring figured out why Tunisia became an actual democracy and Egypt didn’t, even though both uprisings looked identical from the outside.

You see, Tunisia’s opposition groups had all been repressed roughly equally under the old regime, so afterward, they trusted each other enough to share power. To compromise with each other. They negotiated and came to a common ground to present a united front. In Egypt, that unity didn’t exist.

And India has the same problem.

Alliances need political chemistry, not just math. And the INDIA bock doesn’t have that.

The CJP is not registered with the Election Commission, and Dipke has said enough to suggest he wants to keep it that way. It exists to embarrass the government, not to contest a seat.

And that’s a problem.

Go back and look at every protest that actually toppled a government, and the same ingredient shows up every time — someone built a party out of it before the anger cooled.

In 1975, Jayaprakash Narayan spent two years organizing against Indira Gandhi’s Emergency, and it only worked because four opposition parties merged into the Janata Party in time for the 1977 election, with an actual slate of candidates. Indira Gandhi lost her own seat.

Compare that to France’s protest movement Gilets Jaunes (Yellow vests protests). It began in late 2018 over a fuel tax hike, then grew into anger about living costs, inequality, and the Prime Minister’s policies. At its peak, 287,000 people joined the first nationwide protest, and the movement continued for months with weekly demonstrations. They demanded lower taxes, higher purchasing power, and sometimes more direct democracy.

While it partly succeeded on the fuel tax part, it largely failed to become a lasting reformation force, simply because it lacked leadership. There was no single entity leading the movement.

Without a vehicle to replace the government, protests seldom bring out long term reformation.

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The BJP declared an income of ₹4,340 crore in the last financial year. Congress declared ₹1,225 crore. That’s not a small gap. They’re essentially in two different leagues.

So, you don’t need a theory to explain why one party can run a campaign in every language, every single day, and the other can’t. Whoever communicates more usually wins the communication war.

And BJP has money for the mic, speaker, and the media.

Even if I’m wrong about all of the above, even if there is somehow a real electoral force or strong opposition by 2029, I don’t think it moves as many votes as people assume.

I’ll be honest; what follows isn’t something I can point you to a study for. It’s just something we’ve all noticed: The student getting hit on camera and the uncle forwarding a message about “anti-national elements disrupting the country” appear to be watching two completely different narratives.

One is police brutality. The other is violence incited by protestors. Anecdotally, this is what it looks like from where I sit: Whatever makes a 22-year-old furious doesn’t seem to be reaching a 55-year-old’s mainstream TV.

12,000+ readers read this newsletter on money, economy and startups. If you liked this piece, do subscribe to the free newsletter so that you receive the next one straight in your inbox: I’m writing about the economic impact of large-scale protests on a country!

One would assume that GenZs are dissatisfied with the government, and they’d be enough to topple the government.

Well, not really.

I crunched some numbers to understand this:

There are 21.5 crore voters between the ages of 18 and 29 (our typical GenZs). Based on a 65% voter turnout, this means ~14 crore actual votes.

In 2024, 39% of young voters* voted for the BJP. Now, even if I take an extreme scenario and assume that this becomes half because of the dissatisfaction with the government, that means BJP will lose ~2.6 crore votes.

In 2024, the BJP had 23.59 crore votes. So 2.6 crore votes (the extreme case scenario), is just 11% of their vote bank. And even after that, the final result actually depends on which constituency those votes are going away from, because the winning party is determined by seats won, not votes cast.

Given that GenZs are present across the country and not concentrated in any particular constituency, the effect per constituency will most likely be thin.

So even in the extreme case scenario, assuming that GenZ votes will change the government, is a stretch. It needs to be more than that — millennials, GenX and even boomers — need to be on the same page for that to happen.

I don’t think they are.

* Young voters is defined as voters between the ages of 18 and 25. There is no official data for the percentage of BJP voters in the GenZ population (18-29), so I have extrapolated the same 18-25 age group to 18-29.

Add all of this — a shaky opposition, a protest with no vehicle behind it, a huge funding gap, and a massive difference of opinion between generations — and it becomes clear: 2029 is not the reform we might be expecting.

I truly hope we see a difference going forward either way, but if a regime change is the way that’s going to happen, I’m not too optimistic.

Let’s hope I’m wrong. And let’s hope we don’t have another Youssef somewhere in Delhi today.

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I’ll see you next time!

Cheers,

Ankur
(Connect with me on LinkedIn)