Congress gained Madhya Pradesh seats, but vote share still behind BJP’s

BHOPAL: Despite strong anti incumbency against the 15-year old Shivraj Singh Chouhan government, a large number of voters preferred not to go with Congress. This is one of the factors that made the election so uncertain.


Congress managed to nearly double its seats, but its vote share is still a shade lower than BJP’s. Gondwana Gantantra Party and Samajwadi Party, on the other hand, increased their vote share significantly.

SP even ended up winning a seat in this election. The party’s vote share shot up from 0.03% in 2013 to 1.3% this time, and the party secured over 4.96 lakh votes, roughly 10 times the difference between BJP and Congress. There is a meagre difference of 47,827 votes between Congress and BJP in this election.

GGP, whose vote share in the 2013 elections was only 1%, bagged 1.8% votes this time — 6.75 lakh people chose GGP rather than the big parties, roughly 14 times the difference in votes between Congress and BJP. The 2018 election was not only a reality check for BJP, but BSP as well. BJP lost 3.87% of its vote share but BSP, which hoped to make a bigger mark, ended up with a lower vote share and seat tally. It dipped from 6.29% in 2013 to 5% in 2018 and its four seats in 2013 were reduced by half.

Though BJP and BSP lost votes, it wasn’t Congress alone that gained. Votes were diverted to smaller parties like GGP, SP and even new entrants AAP and SAPAKS which got 0.7% and 0.4% votes respectively, thus cumulatively grabbing 1.1% votes.