Ahmedabad, 12 December 2012

This is the 11th article of JP’s ‘Gujarat Election 2012′ series on DeshGujarat. In this series, the first article was about the possible election schedule, the second article made the point that Gujarat elections in 2012 are incomparable with Gujarat assembly elections of the past. The third article was about abolished seats. The fourth article was about newly added seats. The fifth article was about changes in the reserved seats for SC/STs and its impacts over political career of RC Faldu, Nitin Patel, Pradipsinh Jadeja and others. In the sixth article I shared the final delimitation order with some historical background. In seventh article I talked about the results of 2009 Lok Sabha polls in Gujarat perspective. In 8th article I talked about an interesting pattern, the voters of Gujarat follow, in ninth article in this series you read ‘When do voters of Gujarat change the government they elected‘, the tenth article of this series was part two of When do voters of Gujarat change the government they elected . Now here is the 11th article of this series.

So how much Ekmat, Gujarat has been so far in its political history?

Well, out of total 11 assembly elections so far, the voters of Gujarat have elected a stable government with clear majority for 10 times.

This suggests that the voters of Gujarat like stability and clear verdicts. They like to tilt on one side. There’s no or little confusion when it comes to the choice of government. This also shows that megawaves are successful. Micro battles yield result, but don’t affect the overall megawave.

The table presented above shows how much percentage of total seats, the voters of Gujarat gave to the leading party/coalition in past assembly elections.

If you see, the one-to-one fight gives more percentage of seats to winning party. When the fight involves more than two political parties, percentage of seats of the winning party goes down. Take an instance of 1967 when Congress, Swatantrata Party(SP), Praja Samajwadi Paksh(PSP) and Bharatiya Jansangh were in fray. Of them Congress, SP and PSP were serious contenders. In other example, in 1975 the fight was between Congress, Janta Morcho, Kisan Majdoor Lok Paksh(KIMLOP) and Indian National Congress Organization(NCO), and this resulted into lesser seats to the leading party. However in others years like say 1962, 1972 etc the winning party could win good percentage of seats even amid the multiparty fight.

In last four elections, the people of Gujarat have regularly given around 65% seats to the winning party.

The top ‘ekmat’ verdict was witnessed in 1972 when people gave 140 out of 168 seats to Congress with 50.93% vote share. Indian National Congress Organization occupied second place with victory over 16 seats.

So what should be expected this time? Almost all surveys and opinion polls recently have suggested more or less around 65% seats to BJP which is matching to last four results. And well, 20th December is just 8 days away, and it will deliver an answer to the big question.

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