Candidates in the 2019 Lok Sabha election had their fair share of wafer-thin and landslide victories.
In absolute terms, C. R. Patil, the newly minted BJP MP from the Navsari constituency in Gujarat, defeated his closest rival Patel Dharmeshbhai Bhimbai (INC) by the highest number of votes (6.89 lakh).
Uttar Pradesh’s Machhlishahr constituency saw the closest contest, with the BJP’s B.P. Saroj snatching the seat from BSP’s T.Ram with 181 votes.
Mr. Patil’s victory is not the highest ever – that was achieved in 2014 by BJP’s Pritam Munde (6.96 lakh vote margin). Nor is Mr. Saroj’s the lowest ever. That distinction belongs to Konathala Ramakrishna (INC) and Som Marandi (BJP) who won the Anakapalli (Andhra Pradesh) and Rajmahal (Bihar) seats in 1989 and 1998 respectively with a margin of nine votes.
However, it is imperative to look at the vote share difference rather than absolute numbers, because the absolute number of votes will be higher in seats with a large electorate. The largest and smallest vote shares in the history of Lok Sabha elections before 2019 can be accessed here . If the metric of vote share difference is considered, Mr. Patil and Mr. Saroj still retain the record of highest and lowest margin; but the differences are better visualised with a map as below.
The following visualisation represents each constituency as a hexagon. While shades of orange indicate seats where the BJP won, shades of blue indicate Congress seats and shades of grey indicate other parties. In all cases, the darker the shade, the higher the difference in vote share between the winner and the runner-up.
You can move the mouse over the visual to get details of each constituency; you can also key in the name of your constituency to highlight it and see the trend there.
An exploration of the visual shows that down south is the only region where there is a lack of orange compared to the rest of the country. It also indicates that the Congress did not win by a large margin in several seats; on the other hand, BJP candidates hold the distinction of the highest victory margins. It is also noteworthy that of the top 10 highest differences in vote share, three were in Gujarat (all won by the BJP).
Disclaimer: This depiction seeks to visualise results of the election and group them, and is not meant to depict the boundaries of India or the States within it. This is a representation of the constituencies as a hexagonal visualisation.
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