BJP wins comfortably in Haryana but vote share with Congress close

Chandigarh: The vote share of the BJP and Congress turned out to be close even though the saffron party won the elections with a simple majority. The BJP received 39.94 per cent votes, while the Congress managed 39.09 per cent in the assembly polls.

Both parties got more votes this time than the last state polls but the Congress saw a 11 percentage point jump, significantly more than BJP's three percentage point rise.

In 2019 assembly polls, when the BJP won 40 seats out of 90 in the assembly, its vote share was 36.49 per cent. The Congress, meanwhile, had a 28.08 per cent vote share for its 31 seats.

The BJP is set to retain power and form its third straight government, a historic first for the state, after winning 48 seats in the 2024 assembly polls. The Congress, which was predicted to win by many exit polls, won 37 seats, according to the Election Commission website.

The INLD won two seats while independent candidates bagged three.

The JJP and AAP both drew a blank in the polls, results of which were declared on Tuesday after elections for the 90-member Assembly were held on Saturday.

Of the 90 seats, BJP did not contest the Sirsa seat while Congress had left Bhiwani seat for its ally CPI (M) to contest.

Meanwhile, INLD, which won two seats, improved on its vote share of 2019, securing 4.14 percent this time as against 2.44 per cent last time when it had won only one seat.

JJP suffered a heavy loss of vote share, a fall from 15 per cent in 2019 -- when it had won 10 seats -- to 0.90 per cent.

AAP, which contested on its own, secured a vote share of 1.79 per cent as against 0.48 percent in last assembly elections.

NOTA vote share stood at 0.38 per cent this time as against 0.52 in the last elections.

In the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the Congress and BJP won five seats each. BJP had secured a vote share of 46.11 per cent while Congress had secured a vote share of 43.67 from the nine of the 10 Lok Sabha seats it contested. AAP, as an INDIA bloc party, had fielded its candidate in Kurukshetra and lost.