NEW DELHI: The ongoing Lok Sabha elections are seeing a bruising, no-holds-barred contest, as projected in opinion polls, with each and every seat presenting its own set of challenges.
Even as the 2019 polls are already underway, an analysis of the 2014 harvest has revealed that in as many as 28 seats, the victorious nominees posted a winning margin of fewer than 10,000 votes.
While BJP candidates secured victory in 9 such seats, the remaining 19 went to other parties.
In the Ladakh constituency, the battle went right down to the wire, with the eventual winning margin recorded at less than 100 votes. BJP’s Thupstan Chhewang eked out a win with a wafer-thin margin of 36 votes.
Similarly, in Mahasamund constituency in Mund, BJP’s Chandu Lal Sahu won by a slender margin of 1,217 votes.
In Karnataka’s Raichur constituency, Congress’ B V Nayak won by just 1,499 votes.
Unlike the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, when the BJP, riding on the Modi wave, bagged 282 seats, pollsters predict that there’s a likelihood of more candidates winning by a slender margin this time around.
An average of all opinion polls conducted before the first phase of polling on April 11 suggests that the National Democratic Alliance would get 277 seats this time, just 5 more than the halfway mark of 272.
While the NDA mined ‘Modi Magic’ to bag 336 seats, the BJP alone secured 282.
Pollsters have also predicted that the UPA would improve its tally to 138 from a paltry 59 in 2004, this year. The Congress sank to a record low in the 2014 polls, bagging just 44 seats.