Why the results in Delhi matter at a national level
Despite its limited parliamentary footprint, Delhi has always had an important voice in shaping the national political narrative.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has finally been able to bridge the decade long gap between its national and state-level performance in the national capital. After winning all seven parliamentary constituencies in Delhi in 2019 and then the 2024 Lok Sabha elections it has finally won a two-third majority in the Delhi assembly. Despite its limited parliamentary footprint, Delhi has always had an important voice in shaping the national political narrative. What do the latest results mean for larger political landscape in the country. Here are three charts which answer this question.
The BJP’s embrace of freebies continues to reward it
The biggest narrative of the BJP in the 2025 Delhi elections was that all of the Aam Aadmi Party’s welfare schemes would be continued. The AAP campaigned almost entirely on the plank that the BJP was lying. This is the most important takeaway from the fiscal front of political economy. The BJP, after its 2014 victory, invested in welfare schemes which prioritized asset delivery schemes rather than income generation ones. Providing toilets, LPG cylinders, houses and piped water is an example of the former while cash transfers, power and water subsidies or free bus travel are examples of the latter. The BJP made an exception before the 2019 elections by announcing PM-KISAN but was extremely fiscally conservative in the 2024 interim budget before the elections. It paid dearly for this decision in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
In the assembly elections held after the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP has fully embraced income transfer programmes. Promise of cash transfers for women helped the BJP and its allies save their governments in Haryana and Maharashtra despite performing badly in Lok Sabha elections held months ago. This also raises a question whether BJP/NDA and non-BJP governments in other states will make similar promises in forthcoming state elections. If this were to happen, it would mean that the share of capital spending by states will continue to remain lower than that of the Centre. This could hurt in a country where aggregate spending by the states exceeds that of the central government.
See Chart 1: Capex share in central and state spending
Will the Congress get a boost in the anti-BJP space?
Because AAP decimated the Congress to break ground in Delhi it managed to carve out a disproportionately large narrative about its ability to shape national politics outside Delhi and even replace the Congress as the major opposition party. Attempts to forge an alliance between AAP and Congress were short lived and leaders of other opposition parties which were not well-disposed to the Congress often used the AAP to corner the Congress. With the AAP losing Delhi and the Congress managing to get a vote share which is more than the difference between the BJP and AAP vote shares, the former’s political capital is bound to take a beating. It is not clear whether this Pyrrhic victory will allow the Congress to argue from a slightly stronger footing while dealing with other anti-BJP parties in different states. Arvind Kejriwal was one of the two opposition camp chief ministers, the other being Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal, whose party did not have an understanding with the Congress while fighting the BJP. There are two other non-Congress aligned anti-BJP chief ministers in Punjab (AAP) and Kerala (CPI (M)) but the BJP is a distant third or fourth force in these states. The simple fact remains that the biggest beneficiary of Saturday’s results is the BJP.
See Chart 2: State-wise map showing NDA, Congress and other non-NDA chief ministers aligned or hostile to the Congress
The BJP will get an even bigger boost vis-à-vis its own allies
BJP’s Delhi victory has also sent a message to its own allies. By defeating the AAP, which had emerged as a formidable adversary and wrested a section of the BJP’s own voters in assembly elections, the latter has sent a message that it has more than regained the mojo it lost on account of its under-par performance in the 2024 Lok Sabha election. This will allow the party and its leadership to deal with its allies and competing factions within the party with a stronger hand. We will perhaps see the implications of this in the seat sharing and narrative building exercise for the Bihar elections later this year.
See Chart 3: BJP and NDA allies share of MLAs before 2024 Lok Sabha elections and after 2025 Delhi results
