The Congress may be increasingly uncomfortable about the way the vote counting in Madhya Pradesh is going and how Rajasthan is providing a less-than-comfortable 'win' (going by trends) against the BJP than anticipated.
Chhattisgarh was expected to be a tough contest for the grand old party, given the lack of a prominent leader, the larger-than-life image of three-time chief minister Raman Singh of the BJP and the saffron party's dynamic organisation and booth management. But the smallest of the three Hindi belt states has provided the Congress what is not just a massive win, but an unprecedented one.
At 2.30pm, the Congress was leading in 65 seats, up from the 39 seats it won in 2013 and the BJP had fallen to 18 seats, a fall of 31 seats from the last election. To understand the significance of the numbers in the 2018 election, let's take a look at the number of seats won and vote shares of the BJP and Congress in the elections in 2003, 2008 and 2013.
2003: BJP (50 seats and 39.26 per cent vote share) and Congress (37 seats and 36.71 per cent)
2008: BJP (50 seats and 40.39 per cent vote share) and Congress (38 seats and 39.88 per cent)
2013: BJP (49 seats and 41.18 per cent vote share) and Congress (39 seats and 40.43 per cent)
As the figures show, the two parties were separated by less than three per cent vote share in 2003, the first election in Chhattisgarh, and less than one per cent in the next two elections.
Fast forward to 2018. According to Election Commission statistics, at 2.30pm, the Congress had a vote share of 43.1 per cent. This was ahead of the BJP's vote share of 32.2 per cent by nearly 11 per cent, the highest margin in Chhattisgarh's short electoral history. The much-touted alliance of Ajit Jogi's JCC(J) (8.7 per cent) and BSP (2.6 per cent) had a combined vote share of 11.3 per cent. While the JCC(J)-BSP tie-up was expected to eat into the Congress's vote share, it appears to have hurt the BJP more.
Congress candidates were leading by over 10,000 votes in as many as 20 constituencies—Ahiwara, Ambikapur, Bastar, Bijapur, Bindranawagarh, Dondi Lohara, Chitrakot, Dharsiwa, Durg Gramin, Gunderdehi, Jagdalpur, Khallari, Kasdol, Mahasamund, Ramanujganj, Samri, Sanjari Balod, Saraipali, Sihawa and Sitapur—highlighting the extent of the victory.
