A fourth straight win, and a bigger one
What happened
Biju Janata Dal won again, by an even bigger landslide than before.
The BJD won 117 of the 147 seats on offer.
That was 43 more than it needed for a majority.
It also won 43.4% of the vote share — the slice of all ballots cast that went to one party or candidate.
What changed
BJD kept extending its winning run, growing stronger each time.
It had now won 4 elections in a row.
Its own seat count grew by 14 compared with the previous election.
Turnout — the share of registered voters who actually cast a ballot — climbed to 73.8%, the highest Odisha had recorded in an assembly election up to that point.
Notable numbers
A few numbers from that election stand out.
The closest race: Mohana, Odisha was decided by just 115 votes — the margin, how far ahead the winner finished, in votes, over whoever came second.
At the other extreme, Hinjili, Odisha was won by a margin of 62.8% of the vote — one of the most one-sided results anywhere in the state.
This was also the first election where Odisha's ballot carried NOTA — "None of the Above," a ballot option letting voters formally reject every candidate on offer — which drew 1.3% of the vote.
The best turnout of the year was in Dabugam, Odisha, at 84.8%.
The backdrop
By this point, BJD had not lost a single election since it first came to power.