Sunil Kanugolu, The Data-Driven Strategist Behind Congress's Karnataka Win

If the battle of narratives forms the bedrock of politics, the precision to which political parties go to select candidates, study polling behaviour, and craft a campaign is equally important for an electoral victory.

If the Congress, which won the assembly polls in Karnataka with a historic 136 seats on Saturday, had all this working for the party this time, it was because of the prominent role played by Sunil Kanugolu, a 41-year-old low-profile strategist and Congress member who crafted the campaign and did not let the party lose sight of it until the end.

Known to be a "man of ideas, with a handle on the big picture", Mr Kanugolu, originally a Telugu who has roots in Karnataka and now lives in Bengaluru, grew up in Chennai and hails from a business family. After having worked for the BJP, DMK, and AIADMK in the past, Mr Kanugolu joined the Congress last year after having long conversations with Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi, mainly because he wanted to take up a challenge and work with a party that was close to the values he believes in, said a close friend of his.

According to those who know him well, Mr Kanugolu's biggest strength is his ability to form personal relationships with the prominent leaders of the party and integrate his team's campaign into their everyday work.

"He has a personality that is calm but firm. He is low-profile, attention-hating, and because he always comes armed with data from field surveys, he cannot be bulldozed, and politicians find a lot of value in him in their everyday political work," said a Congress insider.

In Karnataka, Mr Kanugolu worked hard to build a strong working relationship with the other prominent leaders running the campaign, mainly the party's general secretary, Randeep Surjewala, Siddaramaiah, and DK Shivakumar, apart from KC Venugopal, who is seen to have helped him navigate the space. This was not an exception, as in almost every non-BJP campaign he has worked on, he has shared a personal connection with the leader, be it DMK supremo MK Stalin or AIADMK head E Palaniswamy in the past. In Telangana too, where he is working on mounting an aggressive political attack against Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao or KCR's government, he is known to share a personal bond with leaders such as Revanth Reddy.

"This makes it easy for his team to integrate into the system and work with politicians, making the campaign more human-centric. In some other cases of pollsters, we have seen party leaders getting upset with strategists and their team members, but with Sunil, that doesn't happen," another party functionary said.

Getting the narrative right and in the party's favour is Mr Kanugolu's biggest strength, and with a background in market research, his team relies on a lot of field surveys, modern-day analytics, and getting an accurate sense of what is happening on the ground.

In Karnataka, Mr Kanugolu came up with the "PayCM" campaign against the Basavaraj Bommai-led BJP government at a time when his detractors were quick to point out that "corruption was not a big issue in South India".

"But what the campaign did was give our party a lot of ammunition to attack the government and connect with people. It gave us the upper hand over the BJP, which kept treating it like a gimmick," the person who worked on the Congress campaign said.

Mr Kanugolu started his preparations a year ago, just a month after joining the Congress. He had also recused himself from working on the Congress campaign in Gujarat, as the time was short. In Himachal Pradesh, his team worked on field surveys to decide the candidates.

"Sunil has a good handle on the big picture, and he doesn't forget the details. He delegates and trusts his team when it comes to detailing. He loves working on everyday snapshots of political campaigning. But the narrative setting is an everyday task for him; he is relentless. He strongly believes that in politics, if you don't put your narrative out, someone else will. So, one has to keep at it," said the above-quoted person.

When it comes to narratives, Mr Kanugolu has his strengths. It was he who brought together aspects such as Tamil pride and the Dravidian model during the Jallikattu protests of 2017, helping the DMK counter an aggressive BJP.

Filed Surveys

The campaign designed by Mr Kanugolu that started with "PayCM" continued with "Kivi Mele Hoova" (flower over the ear), suggesting how people had been short-changed. The five guarantees of the Congress that Mr Kanugolu's team fine-tuned and insisted on making them easy to remember were accompanied by a hard copy of the guarantee card in every household, apart from the most important task of candidate selection. This is the first time the Congress relied on extensive field surveys and not just the personal preferences of local leaders. Known for his insistence on scientific analysis of polling data, Mr Kanugolu, according to those who have worked with him, insists on extensive field surveys, statistics, analytics, and capturing trends using modern techniques, instead of relying solely on call-centre-driven data gathering.

Another person who worked on the party's campaign pointed out that even when the Congress was a little apprehensive about Prime Minister Narendra Modi's rallies making it difficult for the Congress in Karnataka, Mr Kanugolu insisted on focusing on the specifics.

"He doesn't accept it if you just say 'Hawa badal raha hai'; he will work towards knowing if the impact is good enough to change voting patterns and then work towards that," he said.

Mr Kanugolu is expected to play a crucial role in the upcoming elections and also in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, but his immediate tasks will be to handle the party's campaign in the states of Telangana, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Chhattisgarh.

Background

Mr Kanugolu has been part of many election campaigns in the past, particularly of the BJP. Incidentally, the election campaign in Karnataka in 2018 saw him working on the BJP side, and the party managed to become the single largest party with 104 seats. Mr Kanugolu has worked with the global management consulting firm McKinsey before starting work with political parties. He led the Association of Billion Minds (ABM), which advised the BJP on various poll-related work, before quitting it four years ago to start on his own. Known to be deeply influenced by Periyar, caste movements in the country, everyday caste discrimination, and the use of social organizations to counter them are some of his key interests, apart from Tamil cinema.

Apart from being part of Narendra Modi's campaign in 2014, Mr Kanugolu was part of many BJP campaigns, particularly in Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat in 2017. He was also associated with MK Stalin and oversaw its 'Namakku Naame' (We are for Ourselves) campaign during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, when the party won 38 of the total 39 seats. Later, Mr Kanugolu also worked with AIADMK against the DMK and led the party to win 75 seats in the 2021 Tamil Nadu Assembly elections.