IndiaVotes is a website I had created in 2011 during the time I was working for the 2014 election campaign. I had found a gap in the easy availability of election data. While the raw data was available from the Election Commission, it was in PDFs and almost impossible to search. So, a group of us had extracted the data into a database and designed a nice navigation and search interface. I am glad to say that even after 13 years, it remains the best elections data website in India. A Google search for “india elections data” shows IndiaVotes as the #1 search result.
During the recent elections, traffic spiked by a magnitude. I was very surprised. Post 2014, while the site had been updated with the results of all the elections, the interface had not changed, and the site had become slow. I guess its simplicity and authenticity has helped make it popular and the go-to destination for elections data.
It is perhaps time for an overhaul of the site. It needs a Gen AI chat interface – “show me all the constituencies that were won by a margin of under 5%” is much easier than doing the same query on the results pages. It also needs better visualisation of results – we had tried maps once but somewhere it has got lost. Another idea is a “swing calculator” – so enthusiasts can see what would happen if voting patterns changed. I would also like to bring in Form 20 data so it becomes a permanent repository of granular elections data. The one innovation we had done during the recent Lok Sabha elections was a prediction game called YouPredict which attracted a few hundred players. I am hoping that over the next few months, we can create an improved IndiaVotes site – the best needs to become even better!
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A few friends had called me for my take on the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections. My take: after two wave elections in 2014 and 2019, India has gone back to seat-by-seat, state-by-state, caste-by-caste voting, as was the norm between 1989 and 2014. This is what I had written about in my prescient 2011 essay about how the BJP could win 275 seats in the 2014. For any party to win a majority on its own in India, it needs to create a wave and have a very high hit rate in contested seats. This did not happen in 2024.
PS: Here is the IndiaVotes page summarising the 2024 results. An interesting page to see is the alliances summary – focus on the contested voteshare.
