This is part of a series of stories on the 2024 general elections in which the numbers do the talking.
Hyderabad, Kolkata, New Delhi: Seats that the BJP and Congress have won, at least once since the 2009 general election have been displayed here.
BJP has won at least once since 2009, on 369 seats. The Congress, has won at least once on 257 Lok Sabha constituencies.
2009 is when the last delimitation was done, except for Assam and Jammu & Kashmir, where delimitation was done in 2023.
BJP
63 seats have been voting consistently for the BJP, in all four elections since 2009, i.e. in 2014, 2019 and 2024.
If we skip Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh (where the BJP has held consistently across the state with a strike-rate of nearly 100%) seats which emerge as loyal pockets of support for the BJP are in Bihar, Maharashtra, Jharkhand and Karnataka. North Goa is among those seats that the BJP has yet to lose in the past four elections. As in West Bengal’s Darjeeling.
Kangra and Shimla in Himachal Pradesh are in the list of 63.
Among others, Paschim Champaran, Madhubani, Hazaribagh, Haveri, Jalgaon, Hamirpur, Godda, Gauhati, Dharwad, Darjeeling, Darbhanga, Bijapur, Belgavi, Bagalkot, Bangalore (North), Bangalore (Central) Bangalore (South), Udupi-Chikmagalur, Uttar Kannada and Akola, stand out.
Fun Fact: Only seven seats from Uttar Pradesh figure in this list of seats consistently voting for the BJP since 2009, again serving as a reminder of how fluid things there have been, despite the impression to the contrary, given BJP hegemony there in 2014 and 2019.
There are 369 seats out of 543, where BJP has won in at least one election since 2009. This means there are 174 seats it has never won since 2009.
Congress
Congress has 286 seats it can aspire to grow in, as it has won at least once, since 2009, in only 257 seats. This is less than half the total number of seats in the Lok Sabha.
Just 12 seats have voted for the Congress consistently in the past four general elections.
Only three seats from the north figure in the list.
Of the 12, half or six seats are from Kerala alone.
The 12 seats are, Thiruvananthapuram, Ernakulam, Kishanganj, Kozhikode, Ludhiana, Maldaha Dakshin, Mavelikara, Nalgonda, Pathanamthitta, Rae Bareli, Vadakara and Waynad.
But it has broken new ground, with fresh wins in 14 seats. Nagaland, Tura and Dhubri, in the northeast, Saharanpur in UP and Khammam in Telangana, Mayiladuthurai in Tamil Nadu, Jalna, Dhule and Kolhapur in Maharashtra, Hisar in Haryana, Ferozepur in Punjab, Khunti and Lohardaga in Jharkhand and Koppal in Karnataka have been won by the Congress for the first time in 2024, in the time series of the past four general elections considered in this data-set.
Fun Fact: Shillong, Kaliabor, Baharampur sent Congress MPs to the Lok Sabha in 2009 and also in its dark days, in 2014 and 2019, but at a time of Congress revival in 2024, have chosen not to.
Text by Seema Chishti.
Visualisation by Soumashree Sarkar.
