WHILE THE BJP’s overall performance drastically fell in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, as compared to 2019, it won five seats by a margin exceeding 50% of the vote share, up from three in 2019, data released by the Election Commission on Thursday shows. No other party in 2024 won any seat by a vote share of more than 50%.

The candidates who cornered more than half the votes in their seats included Union Home Minister Amit Shah (Gandhinagar seat) and Union Jal Shakti Minister C R Paatil (Navsari), both in Gujarat; former chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan (Vidisha) and Shankar Lalwani (Indore), both in Madhya Pradesh; and ex-CM Biplab Deb (Tripura West). Four of these five seats, barring Tripura West, are considered BJP strongholds.

The candidate who won by the highest vote share was Lalwani, the BJP’s Indore MP, who got 91. 32% of the ballots cast and beat his closest rival by 75% of the votes. The contest for the Madhya Pradesh seat was notable given the Congress candidate withdrew his nomination days before polling and joined the BJP, handing Lalwani an easy fight against the remaining candidates, largely Independents and one from the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).

The other BJP candidates won by margins between 50% and 60% of the votes.

Across all the Lok Sabha elections since Independence, only 198 seats have seen the winning margin cross 50% of the vote share. The record for the highest vote-share margin stands at 97.19%, secured by late Independence activist Piyare Lal Handoo from Jammu and Kashmir’s Anantnag seat in 1989.

Overall, since Independence, just two seats have been won by a vote-share margin exceeding 90%; six seats by between 80% and 90%; 16 seats by between 70% and 80%; 45 seats between 60% and 70%, and 129 seats between 50% and 60%.

The 1971 and 1977 elections, the latter of which was held after the Emergency period, saw the highest number of seats won by more than 50% of the votes, at 54 each. Barring these two years, the number of 50%-plus margin seats has not exceeded 13 (in 1957 and 1984, the post-Indira Gandhi assassination election). In 1996 and 1999 (both of which threw up minority governments), the fewest such seats were won, at one each.

A state-wise analysis shows that Uttar Pradesh has had the most results where seats have been won with 50%-plus vote share margins, at 43. Maharashtra is the next highest, at 31, including six from when it was known as Bombay, followed by Bihar at 27.

The Congress has won the most 50%-plus margin seats at 112. The Janata Party (JP), which had ousted the Congress in the post-Emergency elections, is the next highest at 49. The JP had won all such seats in the 1977 election. The BJP figures third in this list, with 11 such wins.

Naturally, the number of candidates in the fray is a major contributing factor to the scale of the winning margins, deciding how many ways the vote gets split. In a majority of these seats, or 115, the number of candidates was five or fewer. There were 56 such wins in seats with between five and 10 candidates, and 27 with more than 10 candidates.

Four Lok Sabha seats – Karad in Maharashtra, Kurnool in Andhra Pradesh, Tripura West, and Tura in Meghalaya – have each seen four 50%-plus winning margin outcomes, the highest on record. Amethi in UP, Satara in Maharashtra and Surat in Gujarat have each seen three such outcomes. Besides these, 22 other seats have each seen two such results.

Only a handful of leaders – 12 – have won seats multiple times with their vote-share margins exceeding 50%. P A Sangma, former Meghalaya CM and ex-Speaker in the Lok Sabha, won the Tura seat four times in this manner, the highest on record. Among the notable leaders who have won seats with 50%-plus margins at least twice are former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi from Amethi, former Deputy PM Y B Chavan from Satara, former Union minister Ram Vilas Paswan from Hajipur, former Himachal Pradesh CM Virbhadra Singh from Mahasu and Mandi, Gwalior royal family matriarch Vijayaraje Scindia from Guna and Gwalior, and the last maharaja of Rewa Martand Singh.