 "Yogendra Yadav, Shashi Tharoor")
Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Thursday said he was “fascinated” by psephologist Yogendra Yadav’s “revised” prediction that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) may not reach the majority mark of 272 seats in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
Tharoor’s reaction followed Yadav’s recent interview where he suggested that the BJP could secure fewer than 250 seats, possibly dwindling further to 230 when considering the anti-incumbency factor.
Yadav outlined that BJP’s coalition partners might secure between 35 to 40 seats. He further noted that if the BJP’s tally dropped to 230, even with allied support, it would fall short of the majority mark of 272. In response, Tharoor called it, “interesting times ahead”.
“Fascinating: @YogendraYadav has revised his earlier estimates and now says that the BJP will definitely fall short of 272. He tells Karan Thapar that the BJP could go down to 250, but if the undercurrent is strong it could even fall further to 230. Yadav says he expects the rest of the NDA to win between 35 to 40 seats,” Tharoor wrote on X.
“This means that if the BJP were to fall as low as 230 it will not be able, even with the support of the rest of the NDA, to reach the 272 majority mark. Interesting times ahead!” he said.
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Fascinating: @_YogendraYadav has revised his earlier estimates and now says that the BJP will definitely fall short of 272. He tells Karan Thapar that the BJP could go down to 250, but if the undercurrent is strong it could even fall further to 230. Mr. Yadav says he expects the…
— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) May 30, 2024
During the interview, Yadav forecasted an improved performance by the Congress compared to 2019, with a potential triple-digit seat count.
“Congress is much more likely to do better than last time. They were 52. I would imagine something like at least 90 to 100 seats. In the other scenario of a strong undercurrent against BJP, it could get up to 120 seats,” Yadav said in the interview.
Earlier, Yadav, in another interview, predicted the BJP alone won’t cross more than 260 seats and will find it “impossible” to surpass the 300-mark. His poll forecast also suggested that the saffron side may even fall below the 275 or even the 250-seat mark.
Yadav also predicted that Congress would win 85 to 100 seats, and its INDIA bloc members would get another 120 to 135, making the Opposition-led alliance bag 205 to 235 seats.
Political analyst Prashant Kishor, who previously forecasted that the BJP would repeat its 2019 Lok Sabha performance without exceeding 370 seats, referred to Yadav to support his earlier projection.
A video of Kishor’s heated exchange with a journalist in a recent interview went viral on social media. The political strategist was reminded of two previous poll predictions, including “the Congress’s impending electoral rout” in Himachal Pradesh in 2022.
However, Kishor remained steadfast in his prediction that the BJP would repeat its 2019 performance, securing around 300 seats in the Lok Sabha polls. He subtly jabbed at his “rattled” critics, advising them to “stay hydrated” and “keep plenty of water handy on June 4”, the day of the vote count.
