Adding over 25 lakh new voters in just 1.5 years, the Aam Admi Party swept to power on Tuesday, writing a new chapter in the State’s history.
The win was by far the most comprehensive in the history of the State’s elections.
The two elections that come even somewhat close to the AAP’s performance are the 1977 election that brought the Janata Party to power and the very first election in 1951, which the Congress won. The AAP, however, bettered these two records in terms of both seat share and vote share.
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In its first election in 2013, the AAP won 28 seats and got a vote share of 29.49 per cent. This was a strong debut performance, but other debutants, like the N.T. Rama Rao-led Telugu Desam Party’s first election in 1983 and the Asom Gana Parishad’s first election in 1985, were stronger showings.
In its second election, the AAP built on its strong showing in 2013.
It more than doubled the number of votes it polled just a year-and-a -half ago, going from 23 lakh votes to nearly 49 lakh votes.
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This means that the AAP added nearly as many votes — 25 lakh votes — as the BJP’s entire vote in the last election.
As a result, the BJP’s performance, better than 2013 though it was, turned into a whitewash.
The party lost only a fraction of a percentage point of its vote share, and in fact added 2.87 lakh new votes.
In the face of a wave the size of the AAP’s, this was only enough to push it past the line in three constituencies.
Not just did the Congress win no seats in a State it held for three straight terms from 1998 to 2013, and see its voteshare shrink 2.5 times to single digits, it also came second in just four seats.