Ayush Jain

Learn

How Indian campaigns actually work, with the numbers behind them. Written for students, first-time candidates and anyone curious.

How a campaign runs

A professionally run campaign moves through seven stages, from a year and a half out to counting day. Each stage below comes with what the numbers say about why it matters. The timings are typical, not fixed.

  1. About 18 to 12 months before polling

    Understand the ground

    Before anyone talks strategy, the team builds a baseline: past results for every seat and booth, the community map, local issues, and how the party and its leaders are seen. Surveys and field visits test what the data suggests.

    In the dataMost seats are won without a majority. In 64% of assembly results since 2009, the winner got less than half the votes, which is why knowing exactly who else is in the race matters so much.

  2. About 12 to 6 months before

    Decide what the campaign is about

    From that baseline come a few decisions: which seats to win, which voters to win them with, and what the campaign will say. The narrative, the leader's positioning and the issues to own are settled here and then tested.

    In the dataHolding a seat is far from automatic. Across 9,744 pairs of back-to-back assembly elections in the same seat since 2009, the sitting party held on only 48% of the time.

  3. About 9 to 3 months before

    Build the organisation

    Booth committees, volunteer networks and a war room are set up so the campaign can reach every polling station. Outreach programmes take the message to voters directly, well before the formal campaign starts.

    In the dataA typical assembly seat has about 2,16,000 registered voters. No candidate can meet them all, so campaigns break the seat into booths and plan each one separately.

  4. About 3 months before, until the schedule is announced

    Candidates and the manifesto

    Seat-by-seat assessments feed into ticket decisions. The manifesto turns the campaign's promises into specific commitments that workers can repeat door to door.

  5. From the announcement to polling day

    The formal campaign

    Once the Election Commission announces the schedule, the Model Code of Conduct applies. Nominations, rallies, advertising, social media and door-to-door work run to a daily plan, adjusted as tracking data comes in.

  6. The last two days

    Get the vote out

    Public campaigning ends 48 hours before polling closes. The work shifts to making sure identified supporters actually vote and that every booth has a trained polling agent. Try the numbers yourself:

  7. Counting day

    Protect the count

    Counting agents watch every table. In a close seat, this is where a result can be won or lost.

    In the data97 assembly results since 2009 were decided by fewer than 100 votes. The closest, Tiruppattur in Tamil Nadu in 2026, came down to 1 vote.