December 2013. February 2015. And now February 2020. Arvind Kejriwal is set to be sworn in as chief minister of Delhi for the third straight time.
As the Aam Aadmi Party secures yet another emphatic victory in the capital, we take a look at the changing vote shares of the AAP, the BJP and the Congress over these past three elections.
Vote shares in the Assembly polls of 2013, 2015 and 2020:
- 2013: AAP: 29.5% | BJP: 33.1% | Cong: 24.6%
- 2015: AAP: 54.3% | BJP: 32.2% | Cong: 9.7%
- 2020: AAP: 53.6% | BJP: 38.5% | Cong: 4.3%
AAP has won 62 seats out of the 70-member Assembly, and the BJP came through in the remaining eight constituencies.
Cong Still at Zero Seats, but at Less Than Half of Its 2015 Vote Share
Here are the takeaways from the Counting Day numbers of the 2020 election.
From having been in power in the Delhi Vidhan Sabha for 15 straight years from 1998 to 2013, the Congress has continued its slump in the capital.
It fell from 24.6% in 2013 to a single-digit vote share in 2015. Now, five years on, it has further declined from 9.7% to less than half of that. Its vote share in the 2020 Assembly polls stands at a mere 4.3%, a far cry from the formidable force the grand old party used to be in the city.
It won 8 seats in 2013, drew a blank in 2015 and has maintained its tally of 0 seats in 2020.
BJP Recovers Vote Share, But Nowhere Close to Enough
In the 2015 Assembly election, in which AAP recorded an incredible 67-3 margin of victory, the BJP had dropped less than 1 percentage point in its vote share tally from 2013.
In the 2020 election, though the BJP managed to improve its vote share by over 6 percentage points compared to 2015, it wasn’t anywhere close to trumping AAP, which stayed well over the halfway mark even in terms of vote share.
Interestingly, the BJP’s gain of 6.3 percentage points in its vote share coincides with the Congress’ loss of 5.4 percentage points.
Did a large number of erstwhile Congress voters chose to vote for BJP this time instead? Or did most Congress voters switch to AAP, along with BJP managing to woo away a similar number of voters from Kejriwal’s camp?
The jury on that is still out, but hopefully post-poll surveys will be able to throw more light on this interesting phenomenon.
AAP Dominant, Vote Share Almost Unchanged
It’s been five years since Arvind Kejriwal and his Aam Aadmi Party achieved the feat of winning 67 seats out of a possible 70, at a phenomenal conversion rate of 96%.
And while political commentators have still not stopped marvelling about that result, AAP has almost replicated the 54.3% vote share it won in 2015, securing around 53.6% of the total votes polled in 2020.
After five years of being in power, and the 49 days before that in their first term, anti-incumbency still does not seem to be a thing for Kejriwal and co.
Despite the BJP’s gains in vote share in this election, AAP has managed to maintain its dominance, losing only five more seats than it did last time. AAP will have a majority of 89% in the newly elected Delhi Vidhan Sabha.
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)