A viral claim about Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) losing 58 seats by a margin of 2000 votes and 41 seats by a margin of 1000 sets in Karnataka Assembly elections is being shared on the internet.
In the recently held Karnataka polls, Congress won with a majority of 135 seats while BJP scored 66 seats.
(The claim is extremely viral on Facebook and Twitter, and archives of similar claims can be seen here and here.)
Is this true?: We found out that the claim is false. The Karnataka polls had 12 such constituencies where the winning candidate's margin is below 2000.
Out of these 12 seats, the BJP won seven and the Congress party won five seats.
Clearly, the BJP lost only five seats by a margin of less than 2000.
How did we find out the truth?: We checked the constituency wise data on Election Commission of India's website and found out that there are only four constituencies where the winning candidate's margin is below 2000 and eight constituencies where the winning candidate's margin is below 1000.
List of the eight seats winning by a margin of less than 1000 votes can be seen here.
From these eight seats, BJP won three seats and Congress won five seats.
List of the four seats winning by a margin of less than 2000 votes can be seen here.
BJP won all these four seats.
From these total of 12 seats with a winning margin of 1000 to 2000, BJP won 7 seats and the Congress party won the remaining five.
Conclusion: Clearly, this data does not support the claim the BJP lost by small margin in 58 seats.
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