Election Results 2024: How small drop in BJP vote share led to big dent in tally

BJP saw its national vote share fall marginally from 37.3% in 2019 to 36.6% in 2024, but its seat tally dropped by 63 from 303 to 240, putting it well below the halfway mark. In contrast, Congress raised its vote share a bit from 19.5% last time to 21.2%, but that was enough to nearly double its seat tally from 52 to 99.
Also See: Lok Sabha Election Results Live Updates
How could such minor changes in vote share have caused such a large variation in seat tallies? That’s because the national vote share is an aggregation of states, and a party may gain vote share in a state where it is starting from such a low base that adding votes doesn’t translate into winning seats while losing the same amount in a highly competitive state could cost many seats.

That is precisely what happened to BJP this time. For instance, its vote share in Tamil Nadu rose from 3.6% in 2019 to 11.2% this time, but that added nothing to its seat tally. Similarly, it went from 9.6% to 18.6% in Punjab, but in the absence of any alliance, that was not enough to win any seats, so it ended up losing the two it had.

On the other hand, a drop of about three percentage points in Bihar, from 23.6% to 20.5%, cost it five seats, while a drop of a mere 1.6 percentage points in West Bengal meant it dropped six seats. The most dramatic instance, however, was in Maharashtra, where BJP’s share dropped by just 1.4 percentage points from 27.6% to 26.2%, but that led to its winning less than half the seats it had last time (10 versus 23).
Congress presented almost a mirror image of this. In Maharashtra, a rise in vote share of less than one percentage point, from 16.3% to 17.1%, saw its seat tally jump from one to 13. In Rajasthan, it upped its vote share from 34.2% to 37.9%, and that meant winning eight seats instead of none. In UP, a rise in vote share from 6.3% to 9.5% saw its seat tally go from one to six.

The third largest party, SP, achieved its highest tally ever of 37 in the Lok Sabha by significantly raising its vote share from 18% to 33.5%. Combined with Congress’ 9.5%, the INDIA bloc in the state had a 43% vote share, making it a neck-and-neck battle with the NDA. Last time, the SP-BSP combine’s 37.3% was a far cry from the NDA’s 50%-plus vote share. It’s this dramatic closing of the gap, which few had anticipated in the absence of BSP from the opposition alliance, that was the game changer in UP.