How just a few thousand votes helped Congress wrest Himachal Pradesh from BJP

NEW DELHI: When it comes to elections, just a few votes can make a difference between winning and losing.

In Himachal Pradesh, the margins were so less that Congress, which won the elections, secured just a 0.9% higher vote share than BJP.

The grand old party polled 43.9% of the votes while BJP secured 43%. Yet, the barest of difference has helped Congress return to power in the state again.

A quick number crunching shows that difference between margin of victory between Congress and BJP candidates was just of 45,701 votes.

In other words, Congress candidates who won their seats polled 2.3 lakh votes higher than the runner ups while BJP candidates who won polled 1.8 lakh votes higher than the runner ups.



Figures show that 21 out of Congress's 40 winning candidates secured their seats by a margin of fewer than 5,000 votes.

And 13 candidates won with a margin of 5,000-10,000 votes.

Only 6 candidates won with a margin of over 10,000.



The margins in the elections were so close that only one candidate won with a difference of over 30,000 votes.

Meanwhile, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which was the third challenger in the contest, failed to make much of a difference since it secured just over 1% of the total votes.

Comparatively, in Gujarat, where BJP won with a thumping majority, the victory margins were much higher.

Of the 156 candidates who won, 120 secured their seats with a margin of over 20,000 votes.


Only 16 candidates won with a margin of fewer than 5,000 votes.