BJP-led NDA set to sweep Hindi heartland states, predicts News18 mega exit poll

PM Narendra Modi

The Bharatiya Janata Party and its National Democratic Alliance are set to sweep the Hindi heartland states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar Chhattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh in the recently concluded parliamentary elections, a News18 Mega Exit Poll predicted on Saturday.

The Hindi belt is a central factor in the shaping of political power in India. In part, this is due to numerical strength — the north accounts for a massive 245 seats to the Lok Sabha and, barring Punjab and Jammu & Kashmir, the Hindi belt has 226 seats.

Here is a state-wise breakup of BJP's predicted dominance in Hindi heartland states: 

Chhattisgarh:
The exit poll  predicted that Chhattisgarh is not very different from the 2019 outcome. Here, the BJP and NDA may get 9-11 of the 11 Lok Sabha seats. The Congress and the INDIA bloc are predicted to end up with 0-2. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP picked up 9 of Chhattisgarh’s 11 seats with a vote share of 51.44%. The Congress netted the remaining two seats with a 41.51% vote share.

Rajasthan
The BJP and its allies are expected to win 18-23 of the 25 seats in Rajasthan, with the Congress and its INDIA bloc likely to get just 2-7 seats. In the 2019 elections, the BJP swept Rajasthan, winning 24 of the 25 seats with a 59.07% vote share. The Congress got 34.59% of the votes but failed to win even a single seat. The Rashtriya Loktantrik Party from the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance won the only remaining seat with a vote share of 2.06%.

Madhya Pradesh
In Madhya Pradesh, the BJP-led NDA could net 26-29 of all 29 seats, while the Congress and INDIA bloc may end up with 0-3. The BJP bagged 28 of the 29 Lok Sabha seats in Madhya Pradesh in 2019, with a vote share of 58%. The Congress got the remaining seat with a vote share of 34.5% across the state.

Uttar Pradesh

Uttar Pradesh- a state that is supposed to power BJP's dream of 'Mission 400', is predicted to give BJP-led NDA  between 68-71 seats, according to News18 mega exit polls. Read purely in terms of gains, the numbers are certainly a mark-up from 2019, when the BJP got 62 seats, but it does not surpass the 2014 tally when the saffron party stormed to power at the Centre on the basis of its performance in Uttar Pradesh, bagging 71 seats. The mega exit polls gives 9-12 seats to INIDA bock (Congress and Samajwadi Party) in the state.

Bihar 

The politically significant state of Bihar, having  undergone major political churn post the JDU chief Nitish Kumar's switchover to the NDA fold is predicted to give around 31-34 seats to the NDA grouping and around 6-9 seats to INDIA grouping. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP-JD(U)-LJP alliance in Bihar had won 39 out of the 40 seats in the state. For the RJD-led opposition alliance, the solitary victory went to the Congress — in Kishanganj seat.

The battle for Hindi heartland

The Assembly elections held in the winter of 2023 ahead of the general elections were seen as a semi-final ahead of the main battle. Bagging three states in the Hindi heartland surely enthused the BJP rank and file with new vigour. Defeating the Congress in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh as well as retaining MP is already a shot in the arm for the saffron party.

In 2014, the BJP won 190 of the 225 of the seats in the 10 states the Hindi belt is composed of: Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Delhi, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan. That is an 85% strike rate. The BJP’s strike rate was above 90% in six of these states.