First-time, young voters, high turnout: Gen Z, restless and restive, asked for more
In hindsight, the election was about the upwardly mobile, aspirational Indians wanting “jobs” and economic opportunity.
TVK supporters celebrate in Chennai, Monday. (PTI) EACH of the verdicts in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Assam and Kerala is distinctive. But taken together, read with their record turnouts, they send a powerful message: the young voters, restless and restive, worried about their present, and wanting a better future, are asserting politically for change. Many of them are unencumbered – or shrugging – the burdens of the past.
In West Bengal, the first-time voter this year would have been an infant when the feisty Mamata Banerjee stormed the Red Fortress in 2011 or transformed the Brigade Parade Ground into a poster of resistance. In Tamil Nadu, the under- 30s, fatigued by the DMK-AIDMK binary, which is all they have seen, found in actor Vijay’s TVK a new vehicle that could drive down the road to change. In the south, there is only one other example of a leader occupying the CM’s chair within months of forming the party — that was NT Rama Rao in Andhra Pradesh, also from the world of celluloid, who came to power in the wake of humiliating words uttered by the then PM Rajiv Gandhi against the then CM T Anjaiah.
In hindsight, the 2026 election has been about Gen Z. It is also about “Dil Maange More” — the upwardly mobile, aspirational Indians wanting “jobs” and economic opportunity.
It’s not as if women in West Bengal were unappreciative of the Rs 1,500 per month they were getting under Mamata’s Lakshmir Bhandar or under the Kanyashree programme. But they wanted more, a sentiment summed up by a Kolkata slum dweller: “My daughter is now a graduate and she should now earn Rs 20,000 but she cannot get a job.” Women today are the most aspirational group in the country and the BJP dented Mamata’s “Mahila” base. Besides the young voter, it is women who turned to Vijay’s TVK, as did Dalits and minorities.
The arithmetic is written on the wall. Going by the Census projections for 20-34 year olds for 2026 (based on the 2011 census) and voters’ data available for 18-19-year-olds in all four states which went to the polls, voters between 18 and 34 would roughly account for a quarter of the voters. Add to this the women voters above this age, this makes for a significant figure.
How BJP crafted its strategy
Of course, there were a diverse set of moving parts in the BJP’s machinery that geared towards a win: the SIR exercise, the anti-incumbency of 15 years; public anger against the “TMC goons”; mobilisation in the name of Hindu nationalism on the issue of “ghuspaithiyas” ; disaffection of government servants in the wake of the teacher’s scam; the presence of security forces in large numbers; raising “Jai Ma Kali and “Ma Durga” slogans in addition to “Jai Shri Ram” or eating fish to dispel the anti-Bengali image, and, of course, the sheer hard work and planning the BJP put into organisaing their election campaign.
Mamata’s pushback with her “pro-poor, pro-women, pro-Bengal” narrative was not enough to stop the push forward by the Bengal which now wanted “more” than what she was offering. She failed to set the narrative for the future — she fought the battle defensively relying on identity politics with nothing to address the flight of young talent or lack of economic opportunities. The Bengal verdict also shows that welfare schemes, important as they are for the poor — no party can do without them — are beginning to be taken for granted. The voter knows that whoever comes to power will continue them and improve upon them.
This is not to say that the DMK and AIADMK — it made a better showing than expected — or Mamata in Bengal (with 41% following as opposed to 46% for the BJP) do not have their committed adherents.
But 2026 has pitted old politics against new dreams. The new aspirants are impatient for change and asserting themselves politically, able to make a difference between victory and defeat in elections, as seen particularly in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu.
It goes without saying that the BJP’s victory in West Bengal and Assam will give the party complete control over eastern India. Home Minister Amit Shah had spoken about ruling “Anga (Bihar), Banga (Bengal), Kalinga (Orissa)”. Now they will be leading governments in all these three states, as also in Assam, where the party under Himanta Biswa Sarma has got a convincing victory. It makes the BJP almost a pan India party, except for the South.
A special win
But wresting West Bengal, and that too from a mass leader like Mamata, has special significance for the BJP. It will help the party brass still any voices of dissatisfaction against it, within or without.
This could make for greater political stability particularly with difficult times ahead, given the uncertainty over the Gulf war and the likely rise in prices of petrol and other goods, which could fuel popular disaffection.
Election 2026 is equally about the Opposition — which has underscored yet once again the need for it to go back to the drawing board and to decide whether it should unite to take on the BJP in 2029.
Though the Congress has won convincingly in Kerala, the regional satraps have been weakened — be it Mamata or Stalin or Pinarayi Vijayan. This should make it easier for the regional outfits, who are part of the opposition INDIA bloc, to accept the leadership of the larger Congress (which will be called to display a sensitivity and generosity towards these parties.)
But the BJP-ruled Centre will not make this easy for the regional satraps and is likely to open cases of corruption against the leaders of the TMC or DMK. This is a moment of reckoning for the Opposition.
(Neerja Chowdhury, Contributing Editor, The Indian Express, has covered the last 11 Lok Sabha elections. She is the author of How Prime Ministers Decide.)
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