New Delhi: A study on digital campaigns during the 2024 Lok Sabha elections by CSDS-Lokniti, published in The Hindu last week, has shown how political battles have moved from dusty rally grounds to people’s screens, with digital advertising becoming an absolute essential in shaping voter behaviour.

The numbers reveal more than a spending gap; they signify the arrival of a new political era, where a war of capital and data has nearly overtaken traditional door-to-door campaigning.

The data shows a stark strategic divide due to the vast financial disparity between political parties. It pitted the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) industrial-scale, micro-targeted saturation campaign against the Congress’s focused, narrative-driven approach. The study shows how Indian elections are becoming contests of capital and data, where the voter is no longer a citizen to persuade, but a consumer to target and a demographic to manage.

 The difference in the Congress and BJP’s strategy

The data first reveals a chasm in volume. On Meta platforms (Facebook and Instagram), the BJP ran 41,127 ad campaigns to the Congress's 1,041– a 40:1 ratio. On Google and its affiliates like YouTube, the ratio was a massive 24:1, with the BJP running 225,695 ad campaigns to the Congress's 9,251.

Yet, spending tells a different story. The BJP’s Google spend of Rs 56 crore was roughly 2.7 times the Congress’s Rs 21 crore. This gulf between the ad volume ratio (24:1) and the spending ratio (2.7:1) is the key to their different strategies.

The BJP’s saturation strategy 

The BJP ran a campaign built on low-cost, high-volume ads. Meta data shows that 65% of the BJP’s ads cost less than Rs 1,000. This was not just cost-efficiency on the BJP’s part, their goal was to optimise for broader visibility – the digital equivalent of painting every wall with party symbols to create an overwhelming sense of inevitability.

The Congress’s high-impact strategy 

The Congress’s strategy on the other hand was born of scarcity. It invested in fewer, more expensive ads. On Meta, 34% of its ads were in the high-cost bracket of over Rs 1,00,000. On Google, 27% of Congress ads were budgeted above Rs 1,00,000, while 98% of the BJP's ads were budgeted below that threshold. Unable to saturate the environment, Congress had to be more creative in how it used its limited resources. To some extent, this worked: 21% of its ads surpassed 10 lakh impressions, compared to just 3% for the BJP. 

A message of hegemony vs. A narrative of critique

The content of the ads revealed the ideological bent of each party.

The BJP’s message was that of an established power. A staggering 52% of its ads were simple "vote appeals". This was supported by positive themes like ‘infrastructure’ (10%) and ‘development’ (8%). This is the language of a party that believes its right to rule is self-evident. The campaign targeted the modern, isolated individual. To this voter, the spectacle of a strong leader offers powerful psychological comfort. The BJP’s use of Hindi for 72% of its Meta ads, while also using regional languages, showed its dual strategy: promote a national culture while engaging locally.

The Congress’s message was reactive and critical. Its main themes were ‘Attack against opposition" (27%) and ‘Unemployment/inflation’ (26%). Before asserting its own virtues, the Congress first had to puncture the BJP's narrative. Its campaign spoke of lived suffering, trying to turn private pain into public anger. By focusing on problems, however, it risked casting the voter as a victim – a story that, while often true, is emotionally disempowering. Its rational appeal to material interests struggled against an ideology offering identity and purpose. The BJP’s subtle religious nationalism served to deflect public anger from economic failures toward a constructed "enemy”. Surprisingly, the Congress was more centralised in its language, with 92% of its Meta ads in Hindi.

Data, the medium, and the atomised voter

The BJP’s campaign was intensely micro-targeted. In the crucial first phase, it micro-targeted 96% of its ads, while Congress micro-targeted only 32%.

The saffron party digitally replicated its "panna pramukh" ground game, effectively fighting 543 distinct elections. Congress, by contrast, fought one national election.

The BJP also targeted a younger demographic by focusing 53% of its ads on Instagram, while Congress ran 86% of its ads across both Instagram and Facebook simultaneously.

This turns the voter into a consumer; a collection of data points to be targeted with bespoke messages, not a member of a public to be addressed with common arguments.

This strategy is also perfectly attuned to social media, which is more about outrage than reason, and over-simplifies the world rather than tackling complexity, as politics must do.

Institutional capture and contempt for law

The BJP’s ability to mount such a massive digital campaign stems from its capture of the country’s economic and institutional resources, with the invalidated Electoral Bonds scheme looming over the massive funding gap. 

Data from the invalidated bonds shows the BJP encashed Rs 6,060.5 crore or nearly 48% of the total funds. This was more than four times the Rs 1,421.9 crore received by the Congress.

This dominance extends to the rules of the game. The campaign data from the 48-hour "silent period" before polling indicts the system's decay. During these restricted periods, the BJP out-advertised the Congress 22 to 1 on Google, running an astonishing 179,070 ads to the Congress’s 8,149.

An analysis of a sample of these ads found direct violations of the Model Code of Conduct (MCC). Of the 958 sampled Congress ads, 698 were in violation (73%). For the BJP, out of 2,996 ads sampled, 492 were in violation (16.4%).

While a higher percentage of Congress ads broke the rules, the BJP’s immense volume means it committed a far greater absolute number of violations. 

A new paradigm and its perilous future

The CSDS-Lokniti data describes a new political paradigm. The BJP has perfected a digital machine of volume, velocity and granularity. Congress was forced to counter with high-impact critiques that struggled to pierce reality bubbles designed to be immune to facts.

The fundamental shift is that political communication has been torn from public debate and grafted onto the logic of the marketplace. This triumph comes at a terrible price. The strategy of deepening social divisions to win elections creates a "political vocabulary" of polarisation. As information warfare experts warn, this same vocabulary becomes a "technical grammar" for foreign adversaries, who can easily weaponise the divisions sown at home.

The 2024 election has created a chilling trade-off; short-term electoral gain for long-term national vulnerability. This report is a warning. It details the sophisticated tools being used to hollow out the democratic content of the Indian republic. The challenge ahead is not merely to win the next election, but to reclaim the very meaning of what an election is supposed to be; a free, collective, and conscious choice about our shared future.

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