Elections 2014: Seat Retention won the game for BJP

When Modi & BJP set about on Mission 272+, they were looking at a daunting talk of winning at least 156 more seats than their 2009 tally of 116. But that is assuming they retain all of their 116 seats won in 2009. Each sitting seat lost would increase the burden further on the "new expansion" ask. As it turns out, BJP has done extremely well in retaining seats - it retained 103 off the 116 seats won in 2009 and lost only 13. Congress, on the other hand, lost 172 off the 206 seats it won in 2009 and could retain only 34. 

The table below, plots the retention percentages for the top 20 parties of 2009 -

6 parties lost all their seats that they won in 2009 - BSP, DMK, RLD, CPI, RJD, NC. Off these, BSP, DMK, RLD & NC ended up winning no new seats either, finishing with a golden duck in 2014 elections.  

Jayalalitha's AIADMK, Naveen Patnaik's BJD & Mamta's TMC ended up retaining ALL of their seats - 100% seats retained. Shiv Sena (91%) also has a high retainment rate. 

Now, the story doesn't end here. Retaining 103 seats isn't sufficient for forming a govt. BJP, won a whopping 179 new seats. Which means, 63% of the seats won by BJP were new seats, wrested from other parties. 

The table below shows the new seats won by the national and a few regional parties -

Who did BJP wrest these 179 seats from? 

As expected, the maximum number, 109 / 179 were wrested from Congress. Congress lost 172 off its 2009 seats, and 63% of them were lost to BJP. BSP lost all its seats to BJP. SP lost 18 to BJP (and 1 to NDA partner Apna Dal). Ajit Singh's Rashtriya Lok Dal also lost all its seats to BJP in UP. Nitish Kumar's JDU, which shrinked to 2 seats in 2014, most 9 seats to BJP (another 8 to NDA partners). RJD, NCP, DMK, CPM, JMM along with other small parties and Independents make up the rest of the list. 

In cricketing terms, BJP scored well (wrested 179 seats from its rivals). The bowlers (parties) which were blasted the most were Congress, BSP, SP, RLD, JD(U) and to a large extent RJD and NCP. AIADMK, TMC & BJD bowled maidens (did not surrender any seats) but BJP still managed to win the game behind its superior fielding and bowling performance (lost only 11% of its 2009 seats). 

Let's hope BJP repeats the performance in next match as well (2019) :)