Gujarat Elections: Aam Aadmi Party National Coordinator and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal participates in a roadshow for the upcoming Gujarat Assembly Elections, in Rajkot district, Monday, November 7, 2022.
As polling ends, the performance in rural and urban seats shows the extent of a party’s regional influence in Gujarat. In 2017, the BJP secured around 60% of the urban vote. This year, the AAP put up a candidate in almost every seat, challenging the BJP’s ability to retain its urban voting base. However, BJP’s vote share has increased by 4.4 percentage points in urban areas as compared to 2017. Due to this, in 2022, BJP continues to win important urban seats as in 2017.
Table 1 Represents the vote share of the party in urban-rural seats. The BJP secured 64% of the vote in urban areas, an increase of 4.4 percentage points from 2017. The Congress secured 22.2% of the vote in urban areas, a decrease of 12.8 percentage points from 2017. Surprisingly, AAP’s vote share was higher in rural seats than urban. seats. AAP got 14.6% of the rural votes and 10.7% of the semi-rural votes. However, his urban vote share was just 9.7%.
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Table 2 Number of seats won/led by each party in urban and rural areas. The numbers now show that the BJP led/won 20 seats in urban areas, which is the same as the 2017 election result. Of the five seats that AAP led/won, four were from rural areas and one from semi-rural areas. The results clearly show that AAP was stronger in rural areas than in urban areas.