BJP chief Amit Shah's gameplan of targeting over 50 per cent vote share has succeeded in over 15 States. Comparatively, the Congress managed to do that in just Puducherry, where it recorded about 57 per cent.
As per the Election Commission's preliminary estimates, the BJP has got more than half of the total votes polled. And BJP chief Amit Shah gave these statistics, saying the party crossed the 50 per cent vote share mark in 17 States.
It bagged 69 per cent votes in Himachal Pradesh, 62 per cent in Gujarat, 60 per cent in Uttarakhand, 59 per cent in Rajasthan, 58 per cent in Madhya Pradesh, 57 per cent in Haryana, 57 per cent in Delhi, 57.7 percent in Arunachal Pradesh, 51.5 per cent in Karnataka, 51 per cent in UP, 51.7 per cent in Goa, 51 per cent in Jharkhand and 50.5 per cent in Chandigarh among others.
It was Shah's strategy to have an eye over 50 per cent vote share to trump any caste politics, played by the Opposition alliances. Of the total 90 crore voters, the BJP was eying the 50 crore beneficiaries who benefitted from the 133 schemes of the Modi Government. The BJP had fought some Assembly elections last year based on the same strategy.
As a result, the BJP has significantly improved its national vote share from 31.34 per cent in 2014 to a new record high, while there seems to be only a marginal change in case of the Congress from its 19.5 per cent score of the last elections. The Congress was shown to have bagged 22.5 per cent votes till the reports last poured in.
The BJP had got 7.74 per cent vote share in 1984 when it got two Lok Sabha seats, after which it consistently saw an increase till 1998 (25.59 per cent) and then slipped for three consecutive national elections till 2009 (18.8 per cent), before surging again in 2014.
In contrast, the Congress could get a vote share of just about 6 per cent in UP and Bengal, and a little higher at about 7 per cent in Bihar. The score is even worse at just about 1 per cent in Andhra Pradesh and Sikkim. Even in Punjab, where the Congress led the way, its vote share is about 40.10 per cent. It is 37.3 per cent in Kerala, where it was on course to win 15 of the 20 seats . The Congress, which secured 45 per cent votes in the first parliamentary elections in 1952, saw its voting percentage remain in 40s till the 1971 elections. After a slump to 34.5 per cent in 1977, the Congress again returned to 42.7 per cent in 1980 and then to a record high of 48.1 per cent in 1984/85.
After Indira Gandhi's assassination in 1984, the Congress record a vote share of 49.1 per cent, it got 32.14 per cent votes in delayed polls that were held in Punjab and Assam in 1985 — resulting in an overall figure of 48.1 per cent.
The Congress vote share, however, began to dip after that with its voting percentage dropping to 39.5 per cent in 1989 and further to 20s between 1996 and 2009, and even below that mark in 2014.
