Sikkim changes its government
What happened
Sikkim Democratic Front lost power for the first time in years, unseated by a newer rival.
The Sikkim Krantikari Morcha won 17 of the 32 seats.
That left it with 0 seats to spare beyond the 17-seat majority mark.
The outgoing SDF still won 15 seats — nearly as many as the winner.
What changed
The two front-runners were separated by seats, not by how many people voted for them.
The SDF actually edged the SKM in the vote share — the slice of all ballots cast that went to one party or candidate — 47.6% to 47.0%.
10 constituencies flipped from the SDF to the SKM.
Notable numbers
A few numbers from that election stand out.
The tightest finish: Yangthang, Sikkim was decided by just 47 votes — the narrowest margin, how far ahead the winner finished over whoever came second, anywhere in the state that year.
At the other extreme, Djongu, Sikkim was won by a margin of 35.4% of the vote.
Djongu, Sikkim saw the highest turnout in the state that year — the share of registered voters who actually cast a ballot — at 88.4%.
Chujachen, Sikkim was the state's largest constituency by registered voters, with 17,776 names on the rolls.
The backdrop
The party that had just lost power had governed Sikkim without a break for years.
Pawan Chamling founded the Sikkim Democratic Front on 4 March 1993. The party won the 1994 assembly election, and Chamling served continuously as Chief Minister for the next 25 years until SDF's defeat in the 2019 election.