Gujarat Elections: Did AAP-Congress Vote Split Help BJP To Win?

Data from the Election Commission of India show that the Congress and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) ate into each other's votes on 32 seats in the recently held Gujarat Assembly elections. This means that their unified votes could have surpassed the votes gained by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in these 32 constituencies.

However, BJP's win in Gujarat is so decisive that even if votes gained between these two parties would have consolidated and the BJP lost all these 32 seats, it would have made no difference to the outcome of the election. The party would still have got the mandate to form the government in the state with a two-thirds majority.

Data show that Congress appeared as the most common runner-up in this election. Of these 32 seats, on 23 seats, the Congress appeared as the runner-up behind the BJP, with AAP's votes keeping the Congress from surpassing the BJP.

Conversely, on the remaining 9 (of 32) seats, AAP appeared as the runner-up behind the BJP with the Congress having split the vote to keep the former away from victory.

In this election to Gujarat's assembly of 182 seats (with 92 being the majority mark), the BJP won a seventh straight term with a record 156 seats; the highest tally ever won by any party in the state. The Congress (and its ally the Nationalist Congress Party) were decimated to 17 seats down, from a previous 77 seats won in 2017, its lowest ever tally in the state. AAP, who ran a highly visible and boisterous campaign in the state, won five seats. Independents won three seats and the Samajwadi Party got one seat. The BJP also emerged as the single largest party in terms of vote share, gathering 52.5% of the vote statewide.

Following this flop show, KC Venugopal, the Congress' in-charge of the party in the state, blamed the AAP for the party's poor performance, citing a BJP-AAP "unholy alliance". Such an "alliance" in political parlance would mean that AAP was fielded in the election to support the BJP - unofficially - not to win, but to eat into Congress' vote and give the BJP tacit electoral advantage. He is reported to have said that the "unholy nexus between AAP and the BJP was instrumental in dividing the secular votes to script the saffron victory" in Gujarat.

However, data shared above show that while the AAP did cut into Congress' vote, it was not enough to tip the scales in the Congress' favour or even make them a sizeable opposition, as insinuated by Venugopal.

Independents played spoilsport too

If Venugopal is given the benefit of the doubt: has a larger trend of vote splitting at the constituency level kept the Congress from a respectable performance in Gujarat? Not particularly, data show.

It is not only the AAP that has played a prominent role in eating into the Congress' vote. Independents too have played spoilsport in the Congress' prospects, but only on six seats. Even then it would make no difference to the election's outcome.

In Becharaji, Kheralu, Matar, Rajula, Nandod and Padra: independents have explicitly cut into Congress' vote which could have otherwise given them a fighting chance.

On the flipside though, on five seats - Anklav, Khambat, Khedbrahma, Somnath and Vav - a vote split actually helped propel the Congress to victory as several independent candidates ate into the BJP's vote to deny them an even more overwhelming majority.

Multi-party splinters

In three seats, opposition vote was split among not two but multiple political parties. Again, this is an insignificant number which would have not made a difference to the electoral outcome even if the Congress had won them.

In Jamnagar Rural, the BJP garnered 79,439 votes, or 48.8% of the vote. Put together, the vote of AAP (31,939 or 19.62%), the Congress (18,737 or 11.51%) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (29,162 or 17.91%) exceeds that of the BJP.

The seat of Jhagadia is an interesting case where AAP (with 9.99% of the vote) and Congress (7.71% of the vote) prevented an independent candidate, tribal leader and seven-time Member of Legislative Assembly Chottubhai Amarsinh Vasava (with 33.64% of the vote) from consolidating the votes and beating the BJP (45.55% of the vote). Jhagadia is a constituency reserved for the scheduled tribes, which has been won by the BJP for the first time ever.

In Sidhpur, the Congress came within striking distance of the BJP. The Congress garnered 88,373 votes (46.7%) compared to the BJP's 91,187 votes (48.19%). A difference of 2,814 votes exists between them. The data show that other than the Congress, the votes got divided among the Bahujan Samaj Party with 2,040 votes (1.08%), All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen with 1,137 votes (0.6%) and AAP with 2,023 votes (1.1%); votes that could have helped the Congress to win.

The data is publicly available with the Election Commission of India here.