Why Chaddis should stop gloating: Congress vote share in this election was higher than BJP vote share in 2009 elections

The fact that the BJP has won a majority on its own in the 16th Lok Sabha has, inevitably, drawn comparisons with previous elections in which parties have won a majority of seats on their own. What has not quite figured in most of these comparisons is the fact that no party has ever before won more than half the seats with a vote share of just 31%. Indeed, the previous lowest vote share for a single-party majority was in 1967, when the Congress won 283 out of 520 seats with 40.8% of the total valid votes polled.

This statistical fact points to an important aspect of the latest 'wave'. Far from spelling the end of a fractured polity, the 2014 results show just how fragmented the vote is. It is precisely because the vote is so fragmented that the BJP was able to win 282 seats with just 31% of the votes.

Simply put, less than four out of every 10 votes opted for NDA candidates and not even one in three chose somebody from the BJP to represent them. Those who picked the Congress or its allies were even fewer, less than one in five for the Congress with a 19.3% vote share (which incidentally is higher than the BJP's 18.5% in 2009) and less than one in every four for the UPA. Unfortunately for the Congress, its 19.3% votes only translated into 44 seats while BJP's 18.5% had fetched it 116 seats.
With the combined vote share of the BJP and Congress - the two major national parties - adding up to just over 50%, almost half of all those who voted in these elections voted for some other party. Even if we add up the vote tallies of the allies of these two parties, it still leaves a very large chunk out. The NDA's combined vote share was 38.5% and the UPA's was just under 23%. That leaves out nearly 39% — or a chunk roughly equal to the NDA's — for all others.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/lok-sabha-elections-2014/news/BJPs-31-lowest-vote-share-of-any-party-to-win-majority/articleshow/35315930.cms

Vakavaka Pakapaka wrote:

u sound like u get bored when reading important statistical data like the fact that 19.3 % vote share for Congress brought it 44 seats in these elections while 18.5% vote share had resulted in BJP getting 116 seats in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections.

Vakavaka Pakapaka wrote:

మునిగిపోయే వాడికి గడ్డి పరక దొరికినట్లు వీడికి ఇది దొరికింది. ఇప్పట్లో వదిలేటట్టులేడు.

Rashmun wrote:The fact that the BJP has won a majority on its own in the 16th Lok Sabha has, inevitably, drawn comparisons with previous elections in which parties have won a majority of seats on their own. What has not quite figured in most of these comparisons is the fact that no party has ever before won more than half the seats with a vote share of just 31%. Indeed, the previous lowest vote share for a single-party majority was in 1967, when the Congress won 283 out of 520 seats with 40.8% of the total valid votes polled.

NOTA and three-cornered contests would have reduced the % of votes polled by the winning candidate. That doesn't in any way reduce the extent or significance of BJP's win.

It's time Congress supporters accepted the loss with grace and moved on in life. Trying to belittle the other party's achievement with this kind of carping just betrays small-mindedness and blind partisanship.

Merlot Daruwala wrote:

Rashmun wrote:The fact that the BJP has won a majority on its own in the 16th Lok Sabha has, inevitably, drawn comparisons with previous elections in which parties have won a majority of seats on their own. What has not quite figured in most of these comparisons is the fact that no party has ever before won more than half the seats with a vote share of just 31%. Indeed, the previous lowest vote share for a single-party majority was in 1967, when the Congress won 283 out of 520 seats with 40.8% of the total valid votes polled.

NOTA and three-cornered contests would have reduced the % of votes polled by the winning candidate. That doesn't in any way reduce the extent or significance of BJP's win.

It's time Congress supporters accepted the loss with grace and moved on in life. Trying to belittle the other party's achievement with this kind of carping just betrays small-mindedness and blind partisanship.

That Modi is a polarizing figure is a truism. That he has led the BJP to a majority of 282 votes without there being a single parliamentarian from the country’s largest minority is a fact. That the total vote share of the BJP — at 31% — is historically the lowest of any party that has secured a majority at the Centre is also a fact. That in a representative democracy, the consolidation of the majority will always trump the consolidation of the minority is simple arithmetic logic. Lastly, that calculated polarization along identity lines is a proven strategy for inducing such consolidations is also well-known.
Taking all this into account, two things become blindingly obvious. One, all talk of wave or tsunami as a descriptor of this electoral outcome is nothing but an extension of the spin that preceded the polls — which, by the way, have witnessed the most intensive, most personality-centric TV coverage ever, much of it to Modi’s benefit.

Two, the numerical minority that has voted for the BJP — 31% of those who voted (66.38% of the electorate), and 21% of the total electorate — is a minority that is either an active supporter of, or has no problem with, the Hindutva project. It is because they are so clearly a numerical minority that they cannot be said to truly represent the will of the Indian people. Additionally, it is also because they are so clearly a numerical minority even among Hindus that Hindutva is so clearly a project and not a reality.

One should therefore not shy away from naming the mandate for what it is – a minority vote share that, in our deeply flawed first past the post system (FPTP), has translated itself into a majority seat share. True, in the past, the Congress and other parties have also benefited from the FPTP system. So, one might ask, why bring up the FPTP only now?

Well, because in the past, at the national level, the FPTP distortions did not produce a manifestly majoritarian mandate. Apart from the other factors discussed above, Modi’s victory is a majoritarian mandate also because, as a lifelong member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), his ideology as well as his appeal is premised on Hindu supremacy.

It is no accident that every one of the seven Muslim candidates fielded by the BJP lost. Even the so-called Modi tsunami could not save them — not even in Uttar Pradesh. Simply put, it was voter polarization, and a consolidation of Hindu votes — cutting across class and caste divides — around Modi that has converted a 31% vote share into not just a Parliamentary majority, but a Hindu majoritarian verdict.
So it would be a gross misreading to regard verdict 2014 as the electoral expression of aspirational India alone. More important than the aspirational dimension is the fact that it is a fractured mandate. In the past, similarly fractured mandates had yielded coalition governments which, as a matter of fact, were a reasonably fair representation of the pluralism and diversity of India. Not this time.

http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/hNdjVFTqfkl0nEd690YsDK/Mandate-2014-Triumph-of-the-spin.html

My advice applies to G Sampath, the writer of that opinion piece as well. It's time to accept the outcomes and stop carping.

In any event, it is not as if the Congress is covering itself in glory after the horrible beating at the polls. Look at the disgraceful manner in which it "analyzed" its loss. The CWC meeting was a total sham. And now they're blaming their ad agency!

Great! Don't do any introspection. Put the blame for the failures on weak scapegoats. Play down the victory of the opponents, etc.....totally opposite to what Sun Tzu said. All excellent recipes for further downfall and probably total annihilation eventually. Good! Good!

>> The ad agency?

What??? These guys need to get out of this denial mode if the are going to make a comeback in Indian politics.

b_A wrote:

Vakavaka Pakapaka wrote:

మునిగిపోయే వాడికి గడ్డి పరక దొరికినట్లు వీడికి ఇది దొరికింది. ఇప్పట్లో వదిలేటట్టులేడు.

LOL. his speciality is making mountains out of molehills. that's what he worked on for 10 yrs to get his PhD