Delhi polls: How AAP staged a sensational comeback from the brink

The Aam Aadmi Party was hammered by the BJP in all the seven Lok Sabha constituencies of Delhi in May 2014. The BJP had managed to bag a whopping 46 per cent of the total votes cast in the capital which was 13 per cent more than the 33 per cent votes that AAP had managed to garner. Each of the BJP candidates defeated their AAP opponents by a margin of more than one lakh votes.

But in a span of just nine months, the Arvind Kejriwal led AAP seems to have made a stunning comeback. If the Exit Poll data collected by Cicero for the India Today Group is extrapolated over the Lok Sabha constituencies of Delhi then the Aam Aadmi Party would be able to turn a 0-7 deficit into a 6-1 victory in true Lagaan style.

The February assembly elections saw a motley bunch of enthusiastic activists turned netas go up against the most professionally organised election machine in recent Indian history and like Aamir Khan's rag-tag cricket team they seem to have been able to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.  

According to the India Today Cicero Exit Poll projections, AAP leads over the BJP by a substantial gap of at least 9 per cent votes in the three Lok Sabha constituencies of North East Delhi, East Delhi and West Delhi. In South Delhi and Chandni Chowk, AAP enjoys a narrower but still relatively comfortable gap of more than 4 per cent over the BJP. The only Lok Sabha seat where the BJP is projected as being ahead of AAP is the New Delhi constituency, which is ironically where AAP convenor Arvind Kejriwal has his own assembly seat. In the North West Reserved constituency AAP is only one percent ahead of the BJP. This falls within the +/- 2 per cent margin of error as per the Cicero Exit Poll.

The new stronghold of the Aam Aadmi Party seem to be the 16 seats in the Trans-Yamuna area, where AAP enjoys a massive 10 per cent lead over the BJP. These seats are dominated by migrants from UP and Bihar and AAP's vote-share on these seats reflects the kind of support Kejriwal was able to garner among the Poorvanchali voters of the capital. In this election, the BJP gave only three tickets to Poorvanchali candidates. The party seems to have paid for this folly.

In the last assembly polls, the AAP did very poorly in the 16 seats of Outer Delhi. Over the past year, AAP worked hard on building a base for the party in the more rural parts of Delhi and also on developing an organisational structure going right down to the booth level on these seats. In constituencies where AAP did not have strong internal candidates, Kejriwal did not hesitate in importing candidates from other parties. These tactics seem to have worked. While this election saw pitched battles between AAP and BJP in Outer Delhi but in the end AAP seems to have succeeded in securing 3 per cent more votes than the BJP on these 16 seats. This is a very significant factor in determining the final outcome of the Delhi polls because AAP would have struggled to cross the half way mark of 35 if it had not been able to bolster its fortunes in Outer Delhi.  

Finally, in the 38 seats of Delhi city too, the AAP enjoys a 4 per cent gap over the BJP. Taken together, the Exit Poll shows that AAP was the first choice of voters all across the city-state of Delhi and Kejriwal's popularity was not restricted to certain pockets or communities. If the Exit Poll results are correct then AAP's ache din are here.

Vote share across Lok Sabha seats (in per cent)

Vote share across areas (in per cent)

Figures are based on India Today-Cicero Exit Poll