New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) mission — ‘ab ki baar, 400 paar (this time, we’ll win more than 400 seats)’ — fell flat when the 2024 Lok Sabha election results placed the party short of a 272 majority. The BJP was reduced to 240 seats from 282 in the 2019 elections.
The BJP could form the government for a third term but only with the support of its allies — Chandrababu Naidu’s Telugu Desam Party and Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United) — which, in the past, had cut off ties with the BJP.
Several theories are floating around to explain the change in the equation, but what’s a fact is that the number of seats where the BJP dominated has drastically gone down.
The BJP won only 155 seats with a 50 percent or more vote share in this election, showing a sharp decline from the 224 seats where it clinched such major victories in 2019, an analysis of the Lok Sabha elections’ data by ThePrint has revealed.
This means that the BJP dominated in 69 fewer seats in this election, i.e., 30 percent fewer seats, compared to 2019.
However, with over 64 percent of its total wins by 50 percent or more votes, the BJP still managed more big wins than any other party in the Opposition.
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Oppn parties not close to BJP in terms of big wins
Despite a significant decline in seats, where the BJP secured a mega victory, the Opposition parties, which have improved their results, did not secure as many mega victories.
The BJP’s biggest rival, the Indian National Congress, won 18 seats with 50 percent or more vote share in the last election and 37 seats in this election, i.e., 37 percent of the seats it won this time were by a majority.
However, in 2004, when the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance formed the government for the first time, the party won 64 seats with 50 percent or more vote share. It is still not anywhere near that performance.
The BJP’s victory in 155 seats by a majority vote share might look worse than its 2019 number, but it’s better than the party’s performance in the 2014 elections when it won only 136 seats with 50 percent or more vote share.
Besides the BJP, there were other big losers in this election.
Stalin-led Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) won only eight seats with 50 percent or more vote share in Tamil Nadu this time, nearly half of the 19 seats it dominated in 2019.
Similarly, Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) won only two seats with a majority vote share whereas it won 11 seats with a margin of 50 percent or more in 2019.
In Andhra Pradesh, Jagan Mohan Reddy’s Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party (YSRCP) faced a massive defeat in the simultaneously held state and parliamentary elections, seeing a big dip in its mega victory seats. While it won 13 seats with more than 50 percent vote share in 2019, there were no such wins in 2024.
At the same time, YSRCP rival, TDP, gained major victories on 13 seats, coming from zero wins with 50 percent or more votes in 2019. So, 81 percent of its victories this time were major, the highest among all parties.
In Maharashtra, the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena won only two seats with a 50 percent or more vote share, while the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena (UBT) also managed such big wins in two seats. In 2019, the undivided Shiv Sena managed major victories in 10 seats.
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States where the BJP missed out on big wins
A deeper analysis of the state-wise results of the quinquennial Lok Sabha elections showed that the BJP failed to secure big wins as it did in 2019 in the three states of Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, where the INDIA Alliance performed better.
For instance, Uttar Pradesh, the state with the highest number of Lok Sabha seats (80), gave a big surprise to the BJP. In the last 2019 election, the BJP secured 62 seats in UP, winning over half with a 50 percent or more vote share. This time, the BJP won only 33 seats, securing a 50 percent or more vote share in only 13 of those seats. From 38 to 13, the BJP’s seats with a large vote share in UP have less than halved.
Another rude awakening for the BJP came in Rajasthan, where the party won the legislative assembly polls only a year ago. In 2019, the BJP won 23 seats in Rajasthan with a 50 percent or more vote share, halved to just 12 in 2024. Interestingly, the BJP had lost the 2018 assembly polls in the state before the 2019 general elections.
In Maharashtra, the BJP won only five seats with a more than 50 percent vote share, down from 15 in 2019. This also reflects the complicated election contest in Maharashtra — with the regional parties splitting and contesting against each other. The Shiv Sena factions led by Uddhav Thackeray and Eknath Shinde locked horns as part of the INDIA and NDA alliance, respectively, as did the Sharad Pawar and his nephew Ajit Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) factions.
