Shifting Hindutva geography: assessing the electoral performance of the Bhartiya Janata Party in India’sparliamentary elections, 1984–2024, through mapping regional dynamics and vote share pattern

• Monika ^[1]
  1. [1] School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Indore, Indore, India; Departmentof Sociology, Boston University, Boston, USA
• Localización: Parliaments, estates & representation = Parlements, états & représentation, ISSN-e 1947-248X, ISSN 0260-6755, Vol. 45, Nº. 3, 2025, págs. 527-550
• Idioma: inglés
• DOI: 10.1080/02606755.2025.2554389
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• Resumen

  • This study analyses the political expansion of the Bhartiya Janata Party(BJP), 1984–2024, through the lens of India’s parliamentary history,combining spatial analysis (GIS), electoral data, and qualitativesources. While the BJP maintained stable vote shares nationally, its2024 losses in northern strongholds and southern gains revealtensions between majoritarian politics and coalitional pragmatism.This article situates these shifts within critical institutional junctures– such as the 1998–2004 and 2024 coalition eras – mirroring earlierparliamentary transformations (1977 and 1989, for example). Farfrom signalling decline, the BJP’s 2024 victory underlines the party’sadaptive strategies within parliamentary constraints. By linkingelectoral geography to institutional evolution, this study contributesto ongoing debates on right-wing parties in representativedemocracies, challenging assumptions about Hindutva’s limits andoffering a framework for analysing party systems at the intersectionof ideology and historical institutionalism