The battle between the BJP and the Congress in the past two Lok Sabha elections: Here are the seats where the margin of victory was less than 5% | Parami News

The publication takes a look at some of the electoral contests from the 2014 and 2019 general elections where the margin of victory was less than 5%. In this year, it won 42 seats by exactly this much with a national vote share of 37.36%. By less than five percent, Congress Party took away only nineteen seats. The BJP had the largest vote share for any party in Indian history since 1989. As a result, Modi’s BJP secured an absolute majority winning 303 out of total number of seats in lower house of Parliament (Lok Sabha) which is comprised of 543 members. The Congress Party managed to secure only fifty-two.

Table 1: Seats Won by BJP by Less Than Five Percent in 2019

Out of forty two such seats that were bagged by BJP alone during last year’s parliamentary elections, fourteen came from Uttar Pradesh with West Bengal and Odisha each having six. Four constituencies qualify as such in Karnataka State. Machhlishahr constituency in Uttar Pradesh saw BJP candidate win with just a razor-thin margin at about .02 percent difference between him and his closest challenger who happened to be SP’s Tripathi Prem Chandra.

Table 2: Congress Seats won by margins within less than 5% in 2019

Congress won nineteen seats with a margin below five percent in the year 2019, where four of them were Kerala, which had the highest number of constituencies under this category, while Telangana had three and Punjab and Chhattisgarh two each indivual. The closest fight was witnessed at Koraput constituency of Odisha since it had a difference of only 0.33%.

Another example was 2014 when the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) led by Prime Minister Modi came to power. That year, BJP captured a total of 282 seats in Lok Sabha, with 29 of them having a margin of victory of less than five percent. Also, out of the Congress’s total number of forty-four winning mandates, twenty had this feature.

Table 3: BJP’s Seats won by less than 5% in 2014

There were six such constituencies in Uttar Pradesh (most), five in Bihar and three each in Karnataka and Chhattisgarh out if the twenty nine conquered by the BJP ten years ago.

Table 4: Congress Winning Margin of Less Than 5% in 2014

In Kerala, there were as many as six out of the twenty seats for congress win which was less than five percent. After Karnataka, Kerala had four seats in that category. There are two such seats in Assam.

There is another wait this year. The exact number of seats that BJP, Congress or their allies will win will be known on 4th June after the seven rounds of elections are complete.

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