Story in numbers: Vote share of parties with longest-serving CMs

In the 2012 Assembly election, the BJP won 115 of 182 seats, with an average vote share of 53% in these seats

PM Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014. He succeeded Keshubhai Patel in October 2001.
 
Modi, then CM, served two and a half successful terms. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Gujarat secured a stronger base, its vote share increased five percentage points from 44.8% in 1998 to 49.9% in the seats contested in the 2002 state Assembly election.
 
In the 2012 Assembly election, the BJP, with Modi as its chief ministerial candidate, won 115 of 182 seats, with an average vote share of 53% in these seats.

Gujarat is one of the few states with long-serving CMs and political parties.
 

A long rule by one CM and his party contribute to a majority vote share for the party, state election data show. For instance, in West Bengal, where the Communist Party of India (Marxist) ruled for 34 years, they had a 50.8% vote share in 2006, when they last won the state elections under the party’s second CM.
 
In Odisha, where the Biju Janata Dal has been in power since 2000, it had a 43.4% vote share in the 2014 elections.
 
But, over the past decade, two of these states have witnessed strong anti-incumbency against these long-serving governments, with a significant loss in vote share.
 
In West Bengal, the CPI(M), lost to the All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) in the 2011 election, with the CPI(M) vote share reducing nine percentage points from 50.8% to 41.4%. The AITC gained about 20 percentage points in their share of votes, data from the two consecutive elections show.

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Sources: Election Commission of India, IndiaSpend