The Bharatiya Janata Party created history in Gujarat on Thursday, and with a major role played by brand Modi in the state, the party won 156 out of 182 seats, which makes up a whopping 86%, and this is the biggest victory ever registered by a political party in the 62-year history of Gujarat. The factor of anti-incumbency could not be seen anywhere as the BJP won all the 92 seats it had won the last time. And while the Congress, which had won 77 seats in the last elections, could manage to win only 17 this time.
And because the grand old party was unable to win 10% of the seats, it may also lose the post of the leader of the opposition. On the other hand, by winning only 5 seats, the AAP became a national party. At the same time, the trend of changing the government in Himachal Pradesh was carried out as always and the Congress won 40 out of 68 seats and defeated the BJP. During 1966-1977 and 1980-84, the Congress had won 44 elections out of the 83 it fought across 14 states, on Indira Gandhi’s face, which made her political strike rate to be 53%. On the other hand, the BJP has fought 57 elections on the face of Modi from 2002 till now, out of which 32 were won by the party, including 5 victories of the NDA, this makes Modi’s political strike rate a 56%.
There can be seen 4 salient facets related to the Gujarat election results. Firstly, for the first time, the BJP won a whopping 86% of seats in a state, back in 2013, the party had won 82% seats in Rajasthan. Second, this is the BJP’s biggest victory, and it became the second party to win 7 consecutive terms in a state, the first was the Communist Party to win 8 terms in West Bengal. Third, the BJP garnered twice the votes received by the Congress, which has become the highest difference of votes between the ruling and the opposition in any Indian state. Fourth, out of 19 Muslim-dominated seats, the BJP won 15, out of which 6 seats are such, which the party had never managed to win earlier.
At the same time, in Himachal Pradesh, the game took a different turn with the 6% drop of the BJP votes, as 2% of the votes were bagged by the Congress, and 4% by the rebels of the party.
Coming back to Gujarat, it was seen that the BJP’s vote bank was stable while the votes of the opposition got divided. The BJP received 2.5% more votes than the last election, and saw an increase in votes in 57 seats. While in Saurashtra and Southern Gujarat, the AAP proved to be highly detrimental to the Congress, and this is the region where the AAP got the highest votes.
This time again, the exit polls were unable to predict the election results with accuracy, as while almost every exit poll had predicted the BJP’s victory in Gujarat, only 2 could predict a landslide victory for the party, and in Himachal Pradesh, most of the exit polls failed to predict accurately, as they had shown a return of the BJP to power.
