In 2019, BJP won 224 of 303 seats with 50%-plus votes; for INDIA, this number was 54

AS THE BJP hopes to retain its dominance in the Lok Sabha results Tuesday, one crucial detail will be if it can match the performance of 2019, when it won 224 of its 303 seats (nearly two-thirds) with more than 50% of the vote share.

Of these seats, the BJP got more than 70% of the vote share in seven seats, between 60% and 70% in 77 seats, and between 50% and 60% in another 140 seats.

The highest vote share was recorded in Gujarat’s Surat, where Darshana Jardosh got 74.47% of the vote share. Notably, the Surat seat was won uncontested this time after the Congress candidate’s nomination papers were rejected and the other candidates withdrew.

A significant chunk of the BJP’s wins with greater than 50% of the vote share came in states where the party is a dominant force and where its main rival was the Congress. Of the total 224 50%-plus vote share wins, 40 came in Uttar Pradesh, which has a total 80 seats. In its clean sweep of Gujarat, the party won all 26 seats with more than 50% of the vote share. In Delhi, too, it won all seven seats with at least 50% vote share. The other states it swept with more than 50% vote share in each seat were Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Arunachal Pradesh.

In Rajasthan, the BJP won 23 of the state’s 25 seats (it won all), with more than 50% of the vote share. In Haryana, all of whose 10 seats were won by the party, the BJP got nine by a similar margin. In Madhya Pradesh, where it won 28 of 29 seats, it won 25 with more than half the votes. In Karnataka, where it was as dominant with 25 wins from a total of 28 seats, it won 22 seats with 50%-plus votes.

The other states where it won seats with upwards of half the vote share include Jharkhand (eight of 14 total seats), Chhattisgarh (six of