In February 2015, the Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) received an unprecedented mandate from the people of Delhi. Not only did it secure 67 of the 70 seats in the assembly, but also a massive vote-share of more than 54 per cent.
The remaining three seats were won by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) even as it collected 32 per cent of the votes. The Congress, which ruled the city for 15 years, was reduced to zero seats.
Just over a year before this success, Kejriwal, after forming the government with support from Congress in December 2013, had quit as chief minister just after 49 days. He had cited his inability to fulfil key promises due to lack of support from the grand old party.
As a consequence, Kejriwal had just one appeal for the voters during the 2015 assembly elections: to give him a full majority in the house. AAP received much more than that.
But apart from the number of seats won by the AAP, what is to be noted is that it was not much of a close contest for the AAP in individual constituencies either. The party secured comprehensive wins across a majority of assembly segments.
During the 2015 assembly elections in Delhi, of the 67 seats that the AAP won, 60 of its MLAs had a winning margin of more than 10,000 votes. For context, a total of 1.28 lakh voters cast their votes on an average in an individual constituency in Delhi in 2015.
At least 45 of AAP's MLAs had victory margins in excess of 20,000 votes with Arvind Kejriwal himself winning the New Delhi seat with more than 31,000 votes, a seat where 89,000 votes were cast in total.
Across the city, there were just nine seats where the winning margin was less than 10,000 votes. Two of them were Rohini and Mustafabad - seats won by the BJP. The lowest winning margin was recorded in Najafgarh, a Jat dominated seat. AAP's Kailash Gehlot, who went on to become a cabinet minister, won the seat with mere 1,555 votes. The Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) was the runner-up in this seat.
The BJP's Vijender Gupta secured the Rohini seat by 5,367 votes while Jagdish Pradhan won the Mustafabad seat with just over 6,000 votes for the saffron party.
Congress was in the second place in just four seats which include Mustafabad, Matia Mahal, Mangol Puri, and Badli.
With significantly large winning margins, a major shift of votes would be required for the opposition to make some dent in AAP's fortunes on the polling day. Delhi goes to polls on February 8 and the counting of votes is scheduled for February 11.
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