Almost all the exit polls, including News18-IPSOS, have indicated that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will emerge as the biggest party in 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Gujarat being the bastion of BJP, will win almost all the 26 seats in the state, the News18-IPSOS has predicted.
Other exit polls also suggested a similar result in the state.
Today’s Chanakya predicted a whitewash, handing BJP all the 26 seats. The India Today-Axis exit poll also echoed a strong performance by the BJP, handing the party 25 to 26 seats and a single possible seat for the Congress. The Republic C-Voter exit poll, however, gave the Congress four seats in Gujarat, while predicting a strong showing of 22 seats for the BJP in its stronghold.
Exit polls also suggest that Vadodara, a seat earlier held by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, will go to the BJP for a sixth consecutive term.
Vadodara witnessed the sharpest drop of 3% in the turnout in the state — from 70.94% in 2014 to 67.86% this year.
PM Modi had contested in 2014 from Vadodara and marked a huge victory against the Congress candidate Madhusudan Mistry. The figures in exit polls suggest that there is no stopping for BJP in Gujarat and they will continue with their winning streak in the state and Vadodara, too. The party is holding the seat for the five straight consecutive terms of Lok Sabha elections since 1998.
In 2014, Modi won the seat with a huge margin of 49.1% votes (5,70,128 votes) over the Congress candidate Madhusudan Mistry. Later, Modi vacated the seat as he also won the Varanasi constituency in the same election.
The by-elections were held in Vadodara in 2014 after LS polls. BJP again won the mandate with a huge margin of about 45% votes. The BJP candidate, Ranjanben Bhatt, defeated Narendra Rawat who was fielded by Congress.
The two factors—urban and upper caste voters—always play a pivotal role in BJPs voting arithmetic. The population distribution across the constituency suggests that almost 80% of the voters live in the urban areas while just the remaining 20% reside in the rural region. Also, the percentage of minority votes is less than 10% here.
All the seven assembly constituencies—Savli, Waghodia, Vadodara city, Manjalpur, Sayajigunj, Akota, and Raopura—are currently held by BJP. This gives them an edge over the other opponents.
This time around, Prashant Patel of Congress locked the horns with sitting MP Ranjanben Bhatt. She had been a member of various parliamentary committees over the last five years while she served as an MP. She is also a member of the standing committee on industry since October 2016.
Congress' best chance against the BJP in the last two decades came in 2004 when Satyajit Gaekwad from the erstwhile royal family of Vadodara lost to Jayaben Thakkar by a narrow margin of 6,603 votes.
Gaekwad had won the seat by a margin of just 17 votes against Jitendra Sukhadia in 1996.
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