The chief ministerial candidates of the winning parties in all four states that went to polls have won their mandates handsomely.
A close look at the votes polled shows that the CM candidates of the BJP in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chhattisgarh have won by a majority which is greater than all the votes won by those who contested them and lost.
The same goes for Arvind Kejriwal, whose Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) came at a close second in Delhi.
In Madhya Pradesh, the BJP’s Shivraj Chouhan won his seat with 128,730 votes, while the Congress candidate got 53,488 votes.
Even if all the votes polled in favour of the other contestants in the Budhni constituency had been transferred to the Congress candidate, it would not have been enough to stop Chouhan from romping home.
It is the same story in the case of BJP’s Vasundhara Raje in Rajasthan, who won with 114,384 votes.
Her Congress opponent won 53,488 votes. The BJP’s CM candidate in Delhi, Harsh Vardhan won 69,222 votes from his constituency, while the combined votes of the Congress and the AAP, which came second and third, respectively, stood at 43,570.
Vardhan’s victory is sweeter because if all the votes polled in favour of the six other candidates contesting him had been clubbed together, he would still have won.
Ditto in the case of Kejriwal, where he got more votes than the total number of votes his opponents won. Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh of the BJP got 86,797 votes, while the combined votes of his 13 opponents stood at 59,663.