New Delhi / In Haryana, just 6,877 extra votes could have helped BJP get majority on its own

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has won 40 seats in Haryana assembly elections. This is six short of a clear majority in an assembly of 90 members. A analysis shows that just 6,877 extra votes could have given the BJP a clear majority in the state assembly. Here’s why.

In a first-past-the-post system, a party has to just finish first in order to win a seat. Let us assume that the candidates A and B, which finished first and second, have 100 and 90 votes in a constituency. If six of the ten voters who voted candidate A were to shift their vote to the candidate B, candidate B would actually win by one vote, getting 96 against 94 votes polled by candidate A.

The BJP lost six seats — Rewari, Mulana, Nilokheri, Radaur, Rohtak and Faridabad — with a vote margin of less than 2.4% votes of the total votes polled in these constituencies. The Congress won five of these seats while an independent candidate bagged one seat. The total victory margin in these six seats is 13,745 votes. The BJP needed just over half of them, precisely 6,877 votes, to stage a theoretical upset. To be sure, the number of extra votes required would have been much greater had they come from other candidates rather than the winners in these seats. The Congress, on the other hand, was 15 seats short of a clear majority. It would have required at least 41,098 votes to swing in its favour in the 15 seats it lost with the lowest margin for it to win a clear majority. The BJP emerged as the winner in 13 of these seats.

However, the Congress could have won more seats than the BJP had it received just 4,260 more votes in five of these 15 seats — Thanesar, Ratia, Kaithal, Badkhal and Rai — which it lost to the BJP with the lowest margin.