Shimla: Even as Congress secured an impressive victory in Himachal Pradesh, the close contest between the two arch-rivals-- BJP and Congress -- is what set these Assembly polls apart. Congress was able to win by an extremely low margin of merely 0.9% votes. While Congress trailed with 43.9% votes, the Bharatiya Janata Party secured 43% votes in total, thereby giving tough competition to the saffron party.
Considering the past assembly polls in the state, the difference in votes secured by any two leading parties in the fray was always around two lakh votes. The number saw a considerable drop this year, with the margin reduced to merely 38,000 votes. While the BJP managed to get 18,14,530 votes in total, Congress took the lead with just a few more 18,52,504 votes.
In the 2017 Assembly polls, the BJP secured a win over Congress with a much higher vote margin compared to this year. While the BJP had secured 48.79% of votes, Congress lagged behind with 41.68% of votes. The difference -- as compared to this year's 0.1% margin -- was much higher at 6.11%. The BJP had secured a total of 44 seats, while Congress could establish power in only 21 constituencies.
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For a long time, political experts believed that any party would need a margin of at least 4% to secure power in the state, but this year's election broke this belief. A similar sort of vote division was seen in the state in 1998 when Pt Sukhram formed the Himachal Vikas Congress party. Congress and BJP secured a hold over 31 seats, but Congress was declared the winner as it secured 1.14 lakh more votes than the BJP in those elections. The Congress thereby formed the government in Himachal for the first time and retained it for the next five years.
The Congress then came back to power with 1.71 lakh more votes than the BJP in the 2003 elections. Further down the line, in the 2007 elections, the margin was again around 1.60 lakh votes, but the seats won by the BJP were double that of the Congress. In the 2012 Assembly elections, too, this difference further decreased.
Though the Congress and the BJP are typically the chief contestants during the assembly polls, in this year's elections, the Independents have also got more than 10 per cent vote share in Himachal, with most of them being Independents, who contested elections as rebels. The Aam Aadmi Party, however, lagged behind, with just 1.1% votes. It got a total of 46,270 votes in these elections. The CPI(M) got less than 1% votes, while NOTA reached the 0.5% mark.
