Narendra Modi led the Bharatiya Janata Party to a landslide victory, ending Indian National Congress's decade in power.¹

It won 282 of the 543 seats, a majority on its own.

That was 10 seats above the 272-seat mark needed for a majority.

The INC suffered a collapse of its own, finishing second with 44 seats on 18.7% of the vote.

The BJP's vote share — the slice of all ballots cast that went to one party or candidate — reached 30.2%, which still translated into 51.9% of the seats under India's first-past-the-post system.

Activist Arvind Kejriwal and colleagues launched the Aam Aadmi Party in November 2012, growing out of the earlier India Against Corruption movement. It won 28 of Delhi's 70 assembly seats and briefly formed the state government there in December 2013.²

In June 2013, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and JD(U) president Sharad Yadav announced at a press conference that JD(U) was ending its coalition with the BJP, a week after Narendra Modi was made chairman of BJP's 2014 campaign committee.³

In September 2013, BJP president Rajnath Singh announced Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi as the party's prime ministerial candidate for the 2014 general election, following a meeting of the party's Central Parliamentary Board in New Delhi.¹

Aam Aadmi Party convenor Arvind Kejriwal resigned as Delhi Chief Minister after failing to table the Jan Lokpal Bill in the Delhi Assembly, ending his 49-day government just before the general election. The Election Commission then announced on 5 March 2014 that voting would run in nine phases from 7 April to 12 May, with results declared on 16 May.⁴⁵

AAP convenor Arvind Kejriwal contested the Varanasi Lok Sabha constituency against Narendra Modi, coming second ahead of the BSP, Congress and SP candidates with 209,238 votes.⁶

BJP came from opposition to government, ending INC's run in office.

It went from 116 seats at the last election to 282 this time.

Nationwide, 323 of 543 constituencies changed hands.

The single biggest movement ran from INC to BJP, covering 109 seats.

Nationally, turnout — the share of registered voters who actually cast a ballot — rose +8.2 pp to about 66.4%, the highest turnout of any general election up to that point.

Ladakh, Jammu & Kashmir saw the tightest finish of the election: the winner's margin — how far ahead the winner finished, in votes, over whoever came second — was 36 votes.

Surat, Gujarat saw the widest margin of the election, with the winner finishing 56.3% of the vote ahead of the runner-up.

Turnout peaked at Dhubri, Assam, where 88.4% of registered voters cast a ballot — the highest of any seat in the country.

Malkajgiri, Telangana was the largest constituency by registered voters anywhere in the country, with 31,83,083 names on its rolls.

Chennai South, Tamil Nadu drew the most candidates of any seat, 43 names on the ballot.

NOTA — "None of the Above," a ballot option letting voters formally reject every candidate on offer, introduced nationwide for the first time at this election — drew 60,02,942 votes, 1.1% of all ballots cast.⁷

Parliament passed the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, splitting the state and creating Telangana as India's 29th state, though the change did not take legal effect until 2 June 2014. The 2014 vote was held on the old, undivided boundaries just before the split took effect.⁸

The election was fought under constituency boundaries the Delimitation Commission had redrawn nationwide in 2008, the first such redraw since 1976, using 2001 census data.⁹