Election math: What might have been… If Maharashtra’s alliances had remained in place
The BJP-Sena would have finished with 203 seats instead of their current 185 combined — already enough for a majority if they reunite.
(Left to right): Ajit Pawar, Prithviraj Chavan, Udhhav Thackeray and Devendra Phadnavis.
Had both major alliances in Maharashtra remained in place before the elections, the BJP-Shiv Sena combine would have gained while the Congress-NCP would have suffered, a seat-by-seat analysis of voting patterns shows. The BJP-Sena would have finished with 203 seats instead of their current 185 combined — already enough for a majority if they reunite.
The Congress-NCP would have fallen from 83 to 74. If one of these alliances were together while the other broke up, it throws up an interesting range of possibilities, as do various other combinations that were possible but did not happen. The Congress-NCP alliance against a separated BJP and Shiv Sena, for example, would have given the alliance 120 seats, a gain of 37, mostly at the cost of the BJP and the Sena. On the other hand, an intact BJP-Sena alliance against a separated Congress and NCP would have given the saffron combination 227 seats, allowing them to storm the assembly with a nearly four-fifths majority.
A look at what actually happened, and how various alliances would have affected the results.
If the pre-poll alliances between the BJP and the Shiv Sena and between the Congress and the NCP had been intact, the BJP-Sena could have reached Nariman Point with over 200 seats.
The MNS would have lost its sole seat, and the MIM would have been restricted to Aurangabad.
KEY TRENDS:
27 seats won by BJP with over 50% of the votes
9 seats won by NCP with over 50% of the votes
12 seats lost by BJP gave it less than 5% of the votes
8 seats won by Sena with margin less than 1%
Now, simply from a statistical point of view, a few scenarios (see table) and how the results would have been.
Scenario 1 – Sena+MNS = 79: Had the two Senas tied up for the election, they would have additionally won 15 seats, provided no other parties teamed up. This pair would have snatched eight seats from the BJP.
Scenario 2 – Congress+MIM = 47: Had these two tied up, their alliance would have won only three additional seats, if no other parties were to team up. These three seats would have come from the saffron parties.
Scenario 3 – NCP+MIM = 44: An NCP-MIM tie-up would have meant two additional seats, both at the expense of the Congress.
Scenario 4 – NCP+MIM = 44: Among major shake-ups, had only the Congress and the NCP stayed together with no other parties teaming up, the alliance would have won 37 additional seats.
Scenario 5 – BJP+SENA = 227: Had the biggest shake-up — BJP and Shiv Sena tying up with no other alliances in place — taken place, it would have given the BJP-Sena 42 additional seats. It would pushed the combine to 227 seats, as well as snatching the MNS’s sole seat.
Share
