Lok Sabha Elections in India 2024 

This volume brings together a set of analytical essays examinig the results of India’s 18th Lok Sabha elections held in 2024. While national elections primarily determine the composition of the central government, they also reveal distinct patterns of political preference, voter behaviour, and party competition across India’s states. These state-level patterns provide valuable insights into the broader political process, reflecting how national and regional dynamics intersect. Accordingly, the essays in this volume interpret the 2024 national election through the prism of the states.

With nearly a billion registered voters, India’s general elections constitute the largest democratic exercise in the world. Held every five years, these elections determine the composition of the 543-member Lok Sabha, with representatives elected from single-member constituencies across 28 states and 8 union territories. In 2024, 97.8 crore citizens were registered to vote, and 64.6 crore (66.1%) cast their ballots. On an average, each parliamentary constituency comprised around 18 lakh voters – larger than the total electorate of some European nations. Representation is distributed by population: Uttar Pradesh elects 80 members, while Sikkim elects one.

India’s democracy is both nationally integrated and regionally segmented. Its strength lies in this very duality. A single constitutional framework, a unified electoral system, and a common political vocabulary bind together one of the world’s most diverse societies. The same institutions of representation and the same processes of election and accountability operate from Kashmir to Tamil Nadu, from Gujarat to Nagaland, giving coherence and continuity to the democratic experience. National parties, leaders, and narratives provide a shared framework of political engagement – one that allows citizens across the Union to participate in a collective democratic conversation. In every corner of the country, voters respond to broadly similar appeals of leadership, welfare, governance, and identity, yet they interpret them through their own regional histories and social worlds.

At the same time, India’s democracy remains deeply segmented across regions. Each state constitutes a distinct arena of political competition, shaped by its own social composition, party system, and political culture. Electoral choices are mediated by local cleavages of caste, community, and region, producing diverse patterns of party competition and alliance formation. These variations do not weaken democracy; they sustain it. The regional segmentation of politics allows pluralism to flourish within a nationally integrated framework, ensuring that local identities and state-specific aspirations are politically articulated rather than suppressed. Together, these twin tendencies – national integration and regional segmentation – define the federal character of India’s democracy. The 2024 Lok Sabha elections once again revealed this interplay in vivid form: a nationally coordinated contest whose outcomes were shaped by distinct regional logics, reaffirming India’s character as a Union of States where unity and diversity coexist within the same democratic fabric, each reinforcing and renewing the other.

The study of Indian politics tends to be caught between two distinct gazes. The first, cast from the heights of New Delhi, views the states as mere extensions of a national core -subordinate players in a drama scripted by central elites. The second, tethered to the region, perceives India as a loose ensemble of discrete political realms. As editors of this volume, we understand that both perspectives, in their pure form, are inherently limited. The “monistic” national view misses the multiverse of India’s social and political reality, while the “regionally-tethered” view risks losing sight of the “all-India substance” – the shared values and national aspirations that bind the polity together.

Our contributors are situated at the critical “middle vantage point”: below the nation and above the local. This position allows for a gaze that simultaneously takes in both unity and plurality. Those who see reality as an undifferentiated whole miss the parts; those who see only the parts mistake them for the whole. By avoiding these two extremes, the volume helps us arrive at a better understanding of the 2024 Lok Sabha election results by aggregating the diverse realities of India’s states. We thank each of the contributors to this volume for accepting our request to contribute a chapter on the 2024 Lok Sabha election outcome in the state with which they have an abiding academic and research interest.

This book was conceptualized before Lok Sabha Elections 2024. Initially, we had planned to have contributions from 14-15 states. However, as it progressed, its scope steadily kept getting wider, finally covering all states. It was hard to find contributors for each state, but the concerted efforts of the Editorial Team made that possible.

The papers had gone through a review process and we would like to acknowledge the contribution of reviewers in improving the quality of essays. We also wish to thank Dr Smita Agarwal, Delhi University, and Dr Kunal Debnath, Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata for reading parts of the manuscript and giving suggestions.

1. India Votes as a Union of States: Mutual Embeddedness in the 2024 Lok Sabha Elections — K.C. Suri, Vikas Tripathi, A.K. Verma

2. India's 2024 General Election: Continuity and Change — K.C. Suri, Subrata Mitra, Rahul Verma

3. Delhi: Class Alliances, and the Capital Vote — Ashish Ranjan, Atul Kumar Pandey

4. Haryana: Prosperity Did Not Diminish Identity Politics — Ramesh K. Madaan

5. Punjab: Decoding The Process and the Outcome — K. Gireesan, Gurpreet Choudhary

6. Jammu and Kashmir: Emerging Political Alignments — Arunima Deka

7. Himachal Pradesh: Decoding BJP's Hat-trick — Ramesh K. Chauhan, Bharti Sharma

8. Uttarakhand: Shifts and Stability in Electoral Politics — M.M. Semwal, Arvind Singh Rawat, Vidushi Dobhal Naithani

9. Uttar Pradesh: Transition From Identity Politics to Inclusive Politics — A.K. Verma, Sanjay Kumar, Dharmendra Pratap Srivastava

10. Rajasthan: Verdict of Tradition and Transition — Harsh Meena

11. Madhya Pradesh: BJP's Unprecedented Ascendancy — Yatindra Singh Sisodia

12. Chhattisgarh: A Surprise Setback for the Congress — Sheshmanee Sahu

13. Bihar: NDA Dominates INDIA Bloc in Social-Political Engineering — Abhay Kumar

14. Jharkhand: NDA in Troubled Waters — Angarag Sandilya

15. Odisha: BJP Springs a Surprise — R.K. Satapathy

16. West Bengal: Understanding Variations and Volatility — Pratip Chattopadhyay

17. North East India: The Dialectics of BJP's Dominance — Jilly Sarkar, Vikas Tripathi

18. Nagaland: Political Competition in a Changing Context — Amongla N. Jamir

19. Assam: Testing the Limits of BJP Dominant System — Vikas Tripathi, Jyotish Kalita, Dhruba Pratim Sharma

20. Telangana: Reshaping State's Electoral Landscape — Rupak Kumar

21. Andhra Pradesh: Welfare Benefits Alone Do Not Deliver Electoral Victory — K.C. Suri

22. Tamil Nadu: Resilience and Transformation in Dravidian Politics — Vignesh Karthik KR

23. Kerala: Multi-Polar Alliances and Changing Trends of Coalition Politics — G. Gopa Kumar

24. Karnataka: Dual Logic of Voting Preferences and the Shifting Balance of Party Strengths — Sandhya Chaturvedi

25. Goa: Prioritising Social-Political Identity over Governance — Nawoo Varak, Prachi Naik

26. Maharashtra: Leadership, Legacy and Competing Claims of Representation — Manisha Madhava

27. Gujarat: The Continuance of BJP Dominance — Sarthak Bagchi

28. Statistical Appendix- Dharmendra Pratap Srivastava

• A.K. Verma, Director, Centre for the Study of Society and Politics (CSSP), Kanpur.

• K.C. Suri, Professor of Political Science at Nagarjuna University, Guntur (AP) 

• Vikas Tripathi, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, Gauhati University, Guwahati. 

"An insightful contribution to understanding contemporary state politics, showing how national integration and regional segmentation enable pluralism to flourish and constantly redefine the federal character of India's democracy."

Sudha Pai, Former Professor, Centre for Political Studies, JNU, New Delhi

"Nationally integrated and regionally 'segmented'—that is how this book felicitously sums up the larger perspective within which the 2024 Lok Sabha elections are analyzed. Well worth being widely read."

Ashutosh Varshney, Sol Goldman Professor, Watson School of IPA, Department of Political Science, Brown University, USA

"This volume skillfully integrates the multi-layered electoral canvas of the Indian nation and its constituent states and significantly enriches our conceptual and concrete understanding of India's realpolitik."

Pralay Kanungo, Institute for Area Studies, Leiden University, The Netherlands

"This outstanding volume offers a state-by-state account of the results, providing a nuanced and textured portrait of a consequential election."

Milan Vaishnav, Senior Fellow and Director, South Asia Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, USA

"Using an innovative framework of 'mutual embeddedness,' the volume goes beyond the conventional binary between national and state-centric explanations. This collection offers fresh insights into the interplay of national and subnational factors that shaped the 2024 verdict."

K.K. Kailash, Professor of Political Science, University of Hyderabad

"An exhaustive analysis of the 2024 Indian general elections that covers all the states. The volume is alive to both the national perspective and the local nuances of the elections."

Ronojoy Sen, Senior Research Fellow, ISAS, National University of Singapore

"By focusing on the reciprocal embeddedness of national and regional factors, this evidence-rich and insightful volume reminds us that national factors only go so far in explaining electoral outcomes and that states do not function in isolation from their larger political environment."

Gilles Verniers, CERI, Sciences Po, Paris, France

"A must-read for scholars of democracy worldwide. The volume breaks conceptual ground by moving to the vantage point of the 'middle,' avoiding the pitfalls of a monolithic national gaze as well as a hyperlocal view."

Manisha Priyam, Sir Louis Matheson Distinguished Visiting Professor, Monash University, Australia

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