In the last leg of campaigning in Gujarat, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had told the crowd at a Patan rally that anything short of a clean sweep in his home state would make him vulnerable to jibes. “One fewer seat than 26, and I will be taunted and questioned in Delhi, even if we form the government,” he had said.
Gujarat responded to Modi’s emotional appeal by giving all the 26 seats to the BJP in an encore of 2014. In what was seen as a referendum on Modi, his party’s vote share in Gujarat jumped by at least 3% from record-high 59.1% in 2014. All the BJP candidates maintained a lead of at least 1 lakh plus votes over their Congress rivals – minimum lead was 1.27 lakh in Dahod while the highest was 6.9 lakh in Navsari. In 2014, two seats had victory margins below 1 lakh votes.

In the last leg of campaigning in Gujarat, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had told the crowd at a Patan rally that anything short of a clean sweep in his home state would make him vulnerable to jibes. “One fewer seat than 26, and I will be taunted and questioned in Delhi, even if we form the government,” he had said.
Gujarat responded to Modi’s emotional appeal by giving all the 26 seats to the BJP in an encore of 2014. In what was seen as a referendum on Modi, his party’s vote share in Gujarat jumped by at least 3% from record-high 59.1% in 2014. All the BJP candidates maintained a lead of at least 1 lakh plus votes over their Congress rivals – minimum lead was 1.27 lakh in Dahod while the highest was 6.9 lakh in Navsari. In 2014, two seats had victory margins below 1 lakh votes.