Indian General Elections – 2014 has just concluded with the final leg of polling ending on May 12, 2014. Now, everyone is waiting with baited breath for the announcement of results on May 16th, 2014. And even more curiosity is regarding the furiously fought elections of Varanasi where Narendra Modi, BJP’s PM candidate is fighting Arvind Kejriwal, the CM who quit Delhi to fight the Lok Sabha elections.
The electoral results would be out only on May 16th, but here we are figuring out who won the battle of campaigning.
Here are some interesting facts!
Narendra Modi:
- Total Distance Covered while campaigning: 300,000 Kms
- Total Events Attended: 5187
- Youtube Video Downloads: 13 million
- Facebook Likes: 13 million
- Twitter Followers: 3.9 million
- Caller Tunes Downloaded: 100,000
- Total Active Volunteer Base: 2.5 million
- Total Volunteers: 10 million
- Out of 814 million voters, Narendra Modi has directly or indirectly campaigned with 234 million (since September 2013, and the figure doesn’t include TV, Print or Radio programs)
- Total 38 Mega Rallies of Modi were organized where 11 million people directly heard/saw him
- 55 Assembly Poll rallies in 4 states were organized where 5 million people directly heard/saw him
- 196 Bharat Vijay Rallies were organized were 15 million people directly heard/saw him
- Chai Pe Charcha events were organized across 4000 locations where 5 million people participated
- 3D Hologram enabled rallies were conducted in 1350 locations, where 14 million people attended them
- SMS; WhatsApp and Calls were sent out to 130 million people all over the country
Such massive campaigning have never been observed before in the history. India Today has described Narendra Modi’s campaign as a “blitzkrieg never seen before in Indian electoral history”
Arvind Kejriwal
- Total distance covered while campaigning: 7500 kms
- Total direct interactions: 40 million (since September 2013 and the figure doesn’t include TV, Radio and Print Media appearances)
- Handshakes: 130,000
- Facebook Likes: 5.4 million
- Twitter Followers: 1.78 million
- Total volunteers across India: 100,000
- Total members of AAP: 12 million
- WhatsApp messages, emails and calls made to 19.5 million people
- 6 Mega Rallies were conducted where 280,000 people heard/saw him
- 47 road shows and 950 Jan Sabhas organized where 16.4 million people attended
- AAP caps distributed to 1.17 million people
Being his first Lok Sabha election campaign, it seems Arvind Kejriwal and his team has done fair enough campaigning for their party across India. But, again, it seems that they spread themselves too thin by targeting whole of India rather than strictly focusing on urban locations and the constituency they previously won, which is Delhi.
In the campaign war, it is Narendra Modi who has won hands down.
