Road to victory: A look at the numbers guiding the Presidential polls

As the five-year tenure of President Ram Nath Kovind ends on July 24, the Election Commission has kickstarted the process of electing the next President of India. Political parties too have started gathering consensus to ensure the victory of their candidates.

However, the fate of the elections will be decided by the number of MPs and MLAs that the ruling NDA and the Opposition parties have in Parliament and different state legislative assemblies. Let us look at a detailed assessment of the numbers which both the blocs have and understand who holds the highest possibility.

Total votes

As per the recent notification of the Election Commission, the total value of votes stands at 10,86,431. Out of this, the MPs have a total vote value of 5,43,200, whereas the total MLA votes are valued at 5,43,231.

As per Article 54 of the Constitution, only elected MPs and MLAs can participate in the Presidential polls.

Read | TMC hopes to emerge as nucleus of opposition unity in Presidential polls

A candidate needs to secure one vote more than half of the total number of vote values to win the elections. It means that to win the presidential elections, a candidate will have to ensure a total vote value of 5,43,216 in his or her favour.

NDA’s vote share

While the official numbers are yet to be notified, the NDA has approximately 440 MPs in its camp out of the total 776. This constitutes a vote value of 3,08,000 out of the total 5,25,706 (approximately,) which the NDA has in its favour. The rest is a sum of the vote value that MLAs of the NDA have in different states. This is almost 20,000 less than the majority mark.

Percentage-wise, the NDA accounts for almost 48% of the total votes. However, NDA is expecting support from its close allies such as BJD, YSRCP, and AIADMK, which have supported it several times in the past.

While the BJD has 21 MPs in the parliament, the YSRCP and the AIADMK have 28, and 6 MPs respectively. With the vote value assigned to each MP being 700, the BJD, YSRCP, and AIADMK have 14,700, 19,600, and 4,200 vote value respectively in the parliament.

Similarly, BJD, YSRCP and AIADMK have 113, 150, and 65 MLAs respectively in Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu. Since the vote value of each MLA for these 3 states are 149, 159, and 176 respectively, the total value of votes which BJD, YSRCP, and AIADMK MLAs have in their respective states, are 16,837, 23,850, and 11,440.

Hence, the total vote value, which is a sum of vote value of MPs and MLAs for BJD, YSRCP, and AIADMK are 31,537, 43,450, and 15,640, respectively.

Opposition’s vote share

With a total number of 216 MPs, including the TMC, the vote value of parliamentarians from the Opposition bloc is estimated at around 1,51,200. The Opposition has a total vote value of 3,09,358 (approximately) and is way short of the majority mark. However, if the repetitive attempts of Opposition leaders to unite all the non-NDA parties turn out to be successful, the elections can witness a miracle. But with parties like YSRCP, BJD, and AIADMK highly unlikely to support the Opposition bloc, this equation does not seem to turn into reality.