It has been nine days since the results of the Gujarat elections have come. This time the Bharatiya Janata Party has created a record. BJP got 156 seats in this election. The entire opposition got wiped out in the storm of BJP. The Congress was reduced to 17 out of 77 seats. Only five candidates of the Aam Aadmi Party, which staked claim to form the government, could win the elections.
Now a statement of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has come to the fore. In this, he has claimed that if the Aam Aadmi Party was not there, the Congress would have easily defeated the BJP in the Gujarat elections. After this, many types of questions are arising that could this really happen? If the Aam Aadmi Party was not there, would the Congress have won the election? Let’s understand this through statistics…
First know what Rahul Gandhi said?
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi held a press conference on completion of 100 days of Bharat Jodo Yatra. He said, ‘You were a proxy in Gujarat. Had it not been for you, the Congress would have defeated the BJP in the elections. He further said, ‘One should not underestimate the Congress as it is the only party based on ideology and running on it which can defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party.’ Rahul accused the BJP of being a ‘fascist party’.
Now understand from the vote share that what would have happened if you were not there?
The Bharatiya Janata Party got 52.5 percent votes in the Gujarat elections. Means more than half of the total voters voted for BJP only. Now let’s talk about Congress and Aam Aadmi Party. This time Congress has got 27.3 percent votes. The Aam Aadmi Party had to be content with 12.9 per cent votes. 1.57 percent i.e. five lakh people chose NOTA. Candidates contesting other small parties and independents got a total of 4.34 per cent votes. Let us assume that if the Aam Aadmi Party had not been in the election, its entire vote share would have been transferred to the Congress. Even in such a situation, the Congress would have got only 40.2 percent votes. Means 12.3 percent less than the vote received by BJP.
What does the seat math say?
Election Commission figures show that this time the Bharatiya Janata Party won 156 seats. The Congress had to be content with 17 seats and the Aam Aadmi Party with only five. There were 119 seats in the elections, where the Congress was at number two and out of these, the Aam Aadmi Party was at number three in 37 seats. Out of these, the margin of victory and defeat in six seats was less than five thousand votes, while in 10 seats there was a margin of 15 thousand votes. In all other seats, the Congress lost the elections by more than 15,000 votes. Statistics show that if the Aam Aadmi Party was not in the election, the Congress could have got an advantage of 10 to 20 seats. However, this would have happened only if the entire vote of the Aam Aadmi Party was transferred to the Congress.
Now let’s talk about the second possibility. There were 35 seats in this election, on which the Aam Aadmi Party was second. In these two seats, the difference between victory and defeat was less than 10,000 votes, while on all others, there was a difference of more than 15,000 to 1.25 lakh votes. Had the Congress not contested these seats, the Aam Aadmi Party could have got seven to ten of these seats.