Gujarat elections 2017: BJP's vote share rise hides future threat from Congress

BJP's overall vote share margin of victory has reduced. But the small drop has meant a disproportionate loss in the seat tally.

Rahul Gandhi and PM Narendra Modi shake hands at a recent event in New Delhi. (File picture)

NEW DELHI: The BJP may have seen its final seat tally in Gujarat drop from its 2012 score, but the party managed to raise its vote share to its second highest ever in an assembly election in the state.

The BJP was set for a tally of 99 wins out of 182 constituencies around 5:30 pm, down from the 115 it won in 2012. But its provisional vote share had risen from 47.85 to 49.1.

"That the party has increased its vote share after 22 years of ruling the state is a remarkable achievement," said BJP president Amit Shah.

The BJP has won a greater percentage of the vote in an Assembly elections only 2002, when it received 49.85 percent of the votes cast.

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The fall in seats won when read in conjunction with the rise in vote share suggest that the BJP won by wide margins in a handful of seats while thinning the margin in some. 

However, there is a flipside to the BJP's performance. It has seen the overall margin of victory reduce. The difference in vote shares between the BJP and the Congress slid from 8.22 percentage points in 2012 to 7.39 percentage points in 2017. That's a difference of 0.83 percentage points.

And that slip in the vote share margin has thrown up a significant challenge for the BJP in coming elections, especially to the Assembly. The 0.83 percentage point fall saw BJP lose 16 seats, bringing the seat margin against the Congress from 53 seats to just 20.

The Congress too saw an increase in its vote share, rising to 41.4 percent from the 38.93 percent it polled in 2012. This netted the party 16 seats more.

However, the pattern in Gujarat doesn't seem set to affect the BJP's performance in Lok Sabha elections in the state. The party consistently polls a greater percentage of the vote than it does in the Assembly elections, winning the larger share of seats.