Delhi elections: AAP's victory margins show that it wasn't a close contest

BJP leadership had exuded confidence after exit polls had come out; EC data shows that there was no reason to

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) registered a landslide victory once again in the recently concluded Delhi Assembly polls with the party winning 62 seats in the 70-member assembly while its rival Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) settling on 8 seats, and Congress drawing a blank yet again.

AAP had won 67 seats in the previous Assembly polls in 2015. This time AAP' s vote share stood at 53.58 per cent, marginally less compared to 54.3 per cent in 2015.

The campaign for Delhi assembly polls had taken a controversial turn as anti-CAA protests in Shaheen Bagh became the focal point of the BJP's attack. The bitter and heated campaign had made people wonder if it would help the BJP with a late surge in support. Exit polls predicted either a comfortable win or a sweep for the AAP but the BJP leadership rejected them.

"All these exit polls will fail. Save my tweet carefully. BJP will win 48 seats and form government in Delhi--please do not search excuses to blame the EVM," Delhi BJP chief Manoj Tiwari had tweeted, referring to voting machines. Was there a reason for such an assertion by the BJP leadership after the voting had been concluded?

Business Standard looked at data provided by the Election Commission to see if the margins of defeat or victory backed BJP leadership's confidence.

The BJP won 8 seats in Delhi Assembly polls, improving its figure from 2015 polls where it had won only 3 seats. The party improved its vote share from 32.1 per cent in 2015 to 38.5 per cent. While it looked like a close contest, considering the margin of victory in some constituencies, the BJP remained a distant second in most of the seats.

Aam Aadmi Party managed to win 51 seats out of its 62 by a margin of more than 10,000 votes. While 23 seats were won by a margin of 10,000 to 20,000 votes, it managed to win 24 seats by a margin of 20,000 to 50,000 votes. There were 4 seats that it won by a margin of more than 50,000 votes with one even crossing the 75,000 vote difference mark.

This goes to show that it wasn't even close.

 

 

Out of its 8 wins, the BJP also managed to win 4 seats by more than 10,000 votes.

There were two close contests too where the margin of victory was less than 1,000 votes. AAP's Bhupinder Singh Joon from Bijwasan defeated BJP's Sat Prakash Rana by 753 votes. In the second close contest, BJP's Abhay Verma from Laxmi Nagar defeated AAP's Nitin Tyagi by 880 votes.

The biggest victory was secured by AAP's Sanjeev Jha in Burari where he had a margin of 88,158 votes over the BJP candidate.

AAP's candidate from Okhla, Amanatullah Khan, who was trailing initially, clinched victory with the second-largest vote margin. He defeated his nearest rival with a margin of 71,827.