BJP holds on, without a majority
What happened
Bharatiya Janata Party held on to power, though it fell short of a majority on its own.
The BJP won 95 of the 199 seats on offer.
That left it short of the 100-seat mark needed to govern alone — a hung house, where no single party wins enough seats to govern alone.
Its nearest rival, the Indian National Congress, won 76 seats.
What changed
More registered voters turned out to cast a ballot this election than in any Rajasthan assembly election before it.
About 59.4% of registered voters cast a ballot.
The BJP had now won 2 elections in a row in the state.
The single biggest movement was 27 seats moving from the BJP to the INC.
Notable numbers
A few numbers from that election stand out.
Despite the seat gap, the BJP and INC finished almost level in vote share — the slice of all ballots cast that went to one party or candidate — 38.6% against 38.3%.
The closest finish anywhere was at Hindoli, Rajasthan, decided by a margin of just 15 votes — how far ahead the winner finished, in votes, over whoever came second.
About 78.2% of registered voters turned out to cast a ballot at Nimbahera, Rajasthan, the highest share of any seat that year.
Sikar, Rajasthan drew the largest field of the election, with 32 candidates on the ballot.
The backdrop
This kept the same party in charge of the state, even without a majority of seats on its own.
Following the Janata Party's victory in the 1977 Rajasthan assembly election, Bhairon Singh Shekhawat was sworn in as Chief Minister on 22 June 1977, becoming the state's first non-Congress Chief Minister. His government was dismissed in 1980; he later served as Chief Minister again from 1990 to 1992 and from 1993 to 1998, this time as a Bharatiya Janata Party leader.