GUJARAT ELECTIONS 2017 : NUMBER MAGIC
Figure1 : Map of Gujarat Constituencies.
- Last week we all saw the tough battle of Gujarat Elections. Here we saw the BJP trying hard to save its 22 years of long ruled state. Still the people bestowed trust again with the party.
- Though it was said that there is a wave of anti-incumbency but still the young leaders like Hardik Patel, Jignesh Mevani and Alpesh Thakur made the battle like nail biting for the ruling party. Though the BJP came to power but this was among st their worst performance till date. And the Congress proclaimed it to be a Moral Victory to their side.
- Now let me clear this fact that am not going to bore you all with how the whole campaign was, that we all know it.
- When I went through the numbers I found very interesting things that gave me an insight about how numbers have its own X-Factor than anything else in Politics. So lets start this with the Final Results.
GUJARAT ELECTION RESULTS 2017
Fig 2: Gujarat Election Results 2017
We can clearly see that BJP has total loss of 16 seats with increase in voting by 0.2%. While Congress increased its vote share by 2.5% but that made them to grab 16 seats.
As per the Campaign and the past local body Elections the vote share increase was expected to grow more as the Congress even claimed to uproot the BJP Rule and form Government. But its not so.
LEADS TABLE
Fig 3: Partywise Leads Table
Blue Zone
- When we comment on the Organizational Roots of any Political Party its wideness can be seen from the scale of voting pattern. In the above table we have classified all the Winning margins within 10 different ranges. The margin of Victory defines the strong hold of the Organization in their constituency. Wider the range, more tough it becomes to challenge the Present one.
- In table 2 the blue zone can be defined as the safe zone for any political party which are tough for the competitors to win from. Similarly to loose such a strong zone is something like weak Political Performance. Also one Party always aims at strengthening its Blue Zone.
- If we neglect the 7th row of 10000-25000, BJP still has a strong hold in 45 constituencies which is about 50% of the majority to Form the Govt and 25% of the House. Whereas Congress has strong hold only in 11 constituencies.
- Now consider the Whole of the Blue Zone where BJP holds 73 seats which is just short of 19 seats to form the Government while Congress holds about 41 seats which is about 51 seats more to form the Government.
Benefits of Blue Zone:-
- It plays as a backup in tough games.
- Its a long and continuous process to build a strong and unbeatable constituency.
Yellow Zone
- The most interesting part of any Election where 40% of the battle is fought is the Yellow zone. Reasons is simple because its a tough game to retail a seat with less margin and you cannot predict it unless the game is very clear. The amount of such seats are more in any election and also they are the most deciding ones. They normally tend towards the one with the majority.
- We can see that this is the only zone where Congress have its best performance. It has gain about 45% of its seats in this zone with 36 seats. While the BJP won only 26 and saved its Mandate. That mean the overall 62 seats in the yellow zone are the reals king makers in the whole game.
- Yellow seats are crucial and equally losing because if the wave is against the Party then these are the first one to be loose in any election. Relaying on them is a great risk.
- From this overall analysis we can say that Bjp has actually lost the game but its strong blue zone saved it from a big loss. So can conclude that in any election how strong you heat the campaign you can just affect 35-40% of the total seats, here 62/182, whereas its the Organizational base which is a firm backbone tho get through any Election.
SEATS SHUFFLE
Fig 4: Seats Shuffling.
- This is a very important factor in an Election. If we want to achieve more then its our first task to save and preserve more what we have with us and then to seek for other good ones that are good to win.
- In this game BJP came out successful in retaining its 65-70% seats it won in 2012. Similar is the case with the Congress.
- But the real fight is seen in the snatching of seats. When BJP was able to snatch only 19 seats from the opponent and loosing 35 in return which comes to a total of 16 seats loss.
- Similarly Congress gave a tough fight by snatching 36 seats with a loss of 20 which profited them with 16 seats overall.
- This is how the Whole game of numbers is which when we do the Analysis purely on the basis of Numbers.
To Conclude I would say that its was a Victory for Congress when it fought well in grabbing good seats from the BJP but still fail to form Government. Congress needs to strengthen its Organization and to do so it needs to have a Strong and Visionary Leader.
On the other hand it had been a great defeat for the Long Ruling BJP in the state but it won and all credit goes to the tight and deep Organizational Roots it had across the state that made it through the Election. BJP has just passed the exam but if it wants to further sustain then it needs to score and to score it needs to have some crucial Subjects very Efficiently.
Figure 5: Seats Shuffle from 2012 in 2017
