When two days before elections Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Yogendra Yadav announced that AAP was winning 57 seats in the Assembly elections, nobody believed him. At a time when all opinion polls gave AAP, at best, not more than 45 seats, he was confident that they would surge ahead. However, after the stunning sweep of 67 seats by the party on Tuesday with a winning margin of 22 per cent votes, even the psephologist Yadav was shocked.
“We never thought we would lead by 22 per cent. Our survey gave us an 18 per cent lead, but we never expected this. We did moderate our surveys because some numbers were unbelievable. However even then, we expected 62 seats, not more. Probably the one week gap between our survey and the voting day got us those additional votes,” he told The Pioneer.
According to Yadav, when the party started its ground work right after the lok Sabha elections, they were at a deficit of 13 per cent from the BJP in terms of vote share. This deficit, he said, even went as low as 16 per cent in the coming months. Yadav elaborated, “We had the burden of history. Any party when loses so badly in lok Sabha takes at least a year to bounce back in Vidhan Sabha. As per our surveys if polls would’ve been held in July-August, AAP would’ve lost with a big margin. However, we got our first help from the BJP when they pushed the polls ahead.”
Yadav feels that AAP had the first mover’s advantage as BJP kept giving them more leeway. “We made booth level organisational structures, started our campaign on the fact that BJP is running away from elections, put forward positive agendas through Delhi Dialogue and most importantly we announced our candidates early and began door-to-door campaigning. After that BJP helped us by announcing Kiran Bedi as their CM candidate,” he said.
This election AAP also managed to grasp the urban middle class and elite vote which they had completely lost in lok Sabha elections. Yadav said that the party first worked on consolidating their lower middle class and migrant votes and then moved onto gaining the urban middle class vote.
While AAP was gathering most Muslim votes as well breaking Congress’ deposit, a day before elections, they rejected the support they got from Imam Bhukhari which in turn actually benefitted the party. Yadav explained, “This was the first time a party rejected Imam Bhukhari’s support. I think Muslims in the city have moved away from people like him who claim to be stakeholders of a community. I know for sure that if we had accepted the support, we would’ve lost more votes than won.”
Now as the party is sitting with nine-tenth majority in the Delhi Assembly, speculation of the party expanding is also doing rounds. However, Yadav clarified, “We need to build our road map carefully now. We are not a regional party for sure. We consciously chose Delhi as our starting ground for creating a national platform for alternative politics. We hope that in five years we manage to set base in at least five to six other States. We are at the moment looking at political vacuums with weak Opposition like the belt from Gujarat to Odisha including Rajasthan. We can work as a serious third alternative in these places.”