Victory margins show 2022 MCD polls more closely fought

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), that won on Wednesday, has a seat share of 54%, lower than the 66% seat share for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which won the elections in 2017

Were the 2022 Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) elections more closely contested than the one in 2017? A simple comparison of seat shares suggests that they were. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), that won on Wednesday, has a seat share of 54%, lower than the 66% seat share for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which won the elections in 2017.

Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal with Punjab chief minister Bhagwant Mann and Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia after the MCD poll in New Delhi on Wednesday. (ANI)

Even in terms of vote share, the difference between the winner and the runner-up in 2022 is three percentage points, significantly lower than the ten percentage point difference between the vote shares of the BJP and AAP which finished first and second in the 2017 polls.

Did the 2022 elections also see a close contest at the level of wards? It is difficult to answer this question with accuracy. This is because the Delhi State Election Commission has only provided the votes of the winner and runner-up candidates at the ward level. This means the ward level vote shares for candidates and victory margins cannot be calculated. However, it is possible to classify wards by absolute victory margins between the top two candidates.

HT has used a simple classification of wards by four groups of victory margins – up to 500 votes, 501-1,000 votes, 1,001-2,000 votes and more than 2,000 votes – to look at how things changed between the 2017 and 2022 MCD elections. The comparison shows that the share of wards won by up to 500 votes has increased. Share of wards which were won with a margin of more than 2,000 votes has decreased by almost the same amount. The remaining two categories are largely the same.

See Chart 1:

What does a party-wise classification of victory margins tell us? The best way to answer this question is to look at the relative seat share of each party in the four margin categories described above. The comparison shows that AAP’s relative share in the most closely contested wards has come down between 2017 and 2022 elections whereas it has increased in the highest victory margin group. The reverse holds for the BJP.-

See Chart 2:

How accurate is it to treat fixed victory margins to compare whether or not the elections were closely contested at the level of wards? A comparison of average votes polled per ward in 2017 and 2022 is a useful metric to outline the limitations of this approach. This number was 26,425 in 2017 and 29,343 in 2022. This is understandable given the fact that the number of wards came down from 272 in 2017 to 250 in 2022 and total votes polled increased marginally from 7,187,715 in 2017 to 7,335,825 in 2022. This suggests that using similar victory margin categories for 2017 and 2022 will underestimate the number of closely contested wards in 2022. To be sure, one needs information on votes polled in individual wards to make a concrete claim on this question.